The Size of the Universe

Cardinale begins his beguiling debut story collection with a quote from the book of Genesis that ends, as Adam and Eve hide in the garden, with the Lord asking, "Where are you?" This question, and others%E2%80%94of faith, belief, existence, meaning%E2%80%94plague the players of Cardinale's stories. In "The Great Disappointment," the longest and most affecting, a son and mother are isolated in their hilltop home after a great flood. They fish from the roof and have visions of the second coming. The mother eventually hooks "the Savoir," a blind beast "like an underwater ape...coated in thick reddish hair," and keeps him in the house until the son can't take it any longer. "The Singularity" finds a brother and "Sister" playing an increasingly dangerous game of hide and seek that takes a turn both terrible and wonderful when "Father" comes home. And in "Art in Heaven," a father and son argue about Jesus, time, the ark, God's plan, and other illusory concepts. Cardinale's prose is often as hypnotic as his imagination: "As the smoke rose from the bowl of the pipe and vanished into the past..." Cardinale creates a troubling and wondrous world, scattered with of lost souls desperately trying to remake our oldest myths. (Dec.)