Cirrus@Austlit

'A common tenet of the short story form is that it has no time to spare, and for this reason a story often commences as far into the action as possible, pushing up close to a single moment of reckoning. For Anton Chekhov this meant throwing away the first half of the story. For Kurt Vonnegut it resulted in a command that one begin as close to the end as possible. Josephine Rowe, in her second collection, Here Until August, tests this rule to marked effect. Instead of commencing near the end of an event, the 10 stories in this collection come as close as they can to a moment of life’s re-beginning, taking the reader up to the precipice of change rather than its culmination.' (Introduction)