Berkowitz fretfully thinks back over his life: on the verge of a tenure decision he is afraid he will not get; Helen who recently left him; his anxious childhood as an awkward nerd burdened with the first name Alastair. His perhaps misguided life, studying the fragmentary writings of a visionary runaway nun named Marie de la Roche who lived on the cliffs beside the sea, writing poems on bits of her habit that she would tear off and fling into the sea until she finally flung herself after them.

Berkowitz does not know if he's dreaming, he's gone insane, or if he's really somehow dead or not-quite-dead. He lingers, asking questions; his attempt to impose the rational world on his surroundings simply makes him more anxious. He finally stands agonizing on the Threshold, knowing he has one chance to either return or go on. Still agonizing, he's told that Marie said Faith, like a seagull hanging in the air, -- and stepped right through. Faith or insanity? Dream or real? Surreal? He still doesn't know, but has to make his choice.

"The Rapid Advance of Sorrow" is written from the point-of-view of Peter, who expects to die at any time. He reminisces about a lover name Ilona, met when she was a young, plump, idealistic peasant girl. Interspersed are facts about Sorrow, "a mythical city generally located in northern Siberia, said to have been visited by Marco Polo."

The story shifts back and forth between Sorrow and Ilona. We experience the inevitability of what happens to young idealists from the country who reach the city and universities and politics, what happens when art and aesthetics weave together with revolution.

"Lily, With Clouds" stays firmly in the point-of-view of the practical sister Eleanor, whose family "had always been horsy. The men had ridden hard, shot straight, and drunk whiskey. Their women had ruled the social world of Ashton, North Carolina." From the diminished modern version of this life, Eleanor is here to see her sister Lily, who ran away years ago to New York City. No word or sign since, until Eleanor got a brief message that Lily is dying, and she's coming home -- not to Eleanor's spacious house, but to a rundown shack, and Eleanor, exasperated, feels that everyone in their social set will blame her. We find out about Lily's life, her husband who died, his art, and the woman he'd taken as a mistress. Eleanor begins to see that not one of these fit into the convenient slots usually assigned to the labels husband, wife, mistress. Art.

The last story is "Her Mother's Ghosts" which once again concerns an Ilona, remembered from schooldays by the narrator. It's a very brief story, mostly a series of sketches in the form of memories, some of Ilona, some of the narrator; the keelson to this story is the powerful weight of memory, the hull the associations that come of displacement from war-poisoned parts of the world, the sky-scraping sails the consequences of being on the eddy of great events, causing an endless rocking series of what ifs.

Following is a series of poems. I'm far too unqualified to attempt reviewing poetry: like the Friday-night diner at the corner café I know what I like, but I can't begin to describe how it's cooked. Goss's imagery, her fine ear for the rhythm of language, seems especially suited to poetry.

I'd love to quote one in its entirely, leaving the poems to speak for themselves without my smudgy fingerprints all over them, but I fear to trespass against the honor system of fair use. So let me leave the reader with this single stanza from "Helen of Sparta," taken from the middle and see if it lingers in your mind, beckoning to you to discover the rest:

Rags that resemble antique linen,
Hums and mutters and claws at her face,
Browned and withered, with white hair streaming
And a kind of grace.