A single moment can change an entire life. A chance look or touch creates a sudden intimacy between two people, or can make them more distant than ever before. A photographer, both interested and dispassionate, observes his adopted son, and perhaps his very gaze will break everything apart. An old man thinks he remembers an embrace many years in the past. How close can we be to those we love? Children, eccentrics, a father who disappears from a mental hospital – these are the people who cross our paths, accompany us, make us happy, and remain just out of reach.
In these short stories, Judith Hermann seeks out tiny moments with vast consequences, uncovers our loneliness, rage, longing. With a focused, deft touch she sets the words behind which we can glimpse the indescribable drama of human existence.
