The author does not sacrifice the realistic. Meticulous details delineate venue and confirm placement of action, verifying the author s familiarity and identity with Belfast. As impressive, even as necessary, as such realistic details are, the power of the stories is unleashed in the words unsaid, the answers not given, the explanations not provided, the scenes not shown. In content as well as in style, the stories resist closure. Thematically, the collection revolves around people who have suffered and are suffering loss, people who have suffered and are suffering grief over something or someone which is not there.
Form following function, in narration, too, there is always some piece missing.
Cornell subtly and repeatedly induces a potent recognition. Something is missing, something is lost, something is not complete or whole, and yet, very definitely, something remains, as does a gnomon. Yet each story eloquently proclaims the presence of that which remains after part of it has been taken away. By leaving so much information unstated, by threading a pattern of ellipses throughout the stories, Cornell distills the individual grief and bereavement attendant to a death or departure. Cornell relies on two modes of narration.