David Hayden

There's mirrors and there's shadows.

And it's that...

It's the watchfulness of the description is part of what's extraordinary about it.

I can't think of another writer that does what she does.

And you end up with... I mean, she's brilliant syntactically, but she's not scared of the short, simple sentence that just...

Turns you inside out, basically.

So here's a short passage that has mirrors and shadows in it from the story The Shadow of Kindness.

She bent forward to the mirror again and carefully pushed a loose strand into the neat bun at the back of her head.

But as she moved, something moved with her.

something much larger and even more silent than she was.

Her shadow was on the wall to the side of the mirror, and it was following her.

And now it was bending with her, bending toward her, and she stared at it.

The light in her own bedroom gave her no shadow that she had ever noticed.

She paused, and the shadow paused also, waiting for her as she waited for it.

She looked closer, and at that moment, as it bent its head, she knew what she was looking at.

That was her mother's shadow there on the wall.

There was no mistake about it.

That was her mother.

Yeah, I was just thinking about, you know, William Maxwell compared her to Genyev.

Didn't compare her to an American writer or an Irish writer.