Calling up the Dead: Stories

Herewith, six stories (with an intensity belying their leisurely length), which are set internationally and which span all ages and emotions. In them Weaver holds true to his surname by threading the human spirit poignantly, regardless of the story's setting or mood-be it comic, magical, or grotesque. He, for instance, moves us deftly from three war refugees barely into their puberty, to a talking balcony filled with releasing pity for an elderly woman, to an Asian Indian who has repatriated only to witness a patricide, to an oddly realistic "fairy tale" set in contemporary Russia. Wherever he moves us, he does so with unsettling grace.