Book Review: "Grazing The Long Acre" By Gwyneth Jones - "Interspatial Ponderings"

Meera Srikant

7 July 2009, 09:10

Grazing the Long Acre by Gwyneth Jones is a collection of short stories that falls into the science fiction category. She dwells much on interspatial travel, interspatial governments, visiting distant planets and interacting with the locals – so to say.

But the undercurrent, despite the predisposition to imagine these new worlds, is relationships – be it among humans, or humans and inhabitants of the other worlds. In essence the emotions are much the same, interactions just as natural as it is in a normal world. The sci-fi part acts as a prop to kick the imagination of the reader to a higher plane.

The author is a master of understatement, and conveys subtly the underlying sorrow, melancholy and the inevitability of the direction the relationships and the situations take, without detailing them much. It leaves the reader desiring for more – you just have to close the book at the end of each story to assimilate the feelings and to understand one’s own reactions.

I am not much of a short story person because there is no time for the character to grow on you. Nor am I sci-fi reader. So, there are times when some details whizzed above my head. But what did remain were the emotions.

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