The Secret Strength of Children

First Edition. Authors’s copy.
A son falls out of bed. A father belittles and mocks. One weak. The other strong.
End of story. Or is it?
A teacher punishes. Who feels the sting?
A mother hurries her child into the terror of the city, the seemingly simple outer mission of buying new shoes. But who is here vanquished? Who thrillingly survives?
The metaphor might be stealing a comic, listening to the radio, crossing a forbidden railway line, those everyday elevations into adulthood, but look again.
And in the longest story, where a father wakes in nightmare of dumb denial, his unconscious holding court, the theme finds its strongest establishment: the child in full glory, defining its existence, conjuring the world.