Although billed as a collection of short stories, I think this book is much better described as poetry, and I’ve tagged it as such. Although they’re not in iambic pentameter or any other such fixed structure, there is a poetic cadence to most of the stories, many of which are just a few paragraphs, and none of which are longer than a couple of pages. The stories all have common themes of loss and death, but they’re not as depressing as they might sound. The mood is more somber and melancholy.
Poetry isn’t really my thing, but this book made for an interesting change of pace. It is short enough that you will almost certainly finish it in a single sitting. There are quite a few typos early on in the book, which is a particular problem for this type of work, since it interrupts the cadence the author achieves with the prose. As it’s a translation, it’s hard to tell if it’s the author or the translator who seems to have “worm” and “warm” mixed up. The two words mean very different things, so you trip over them when the wrong one is used.
I picked up the book free over at Smashwords, so there’s definitely no regrets in reading something different than what I usually read.
“Moment of truth” is available from Amazon