The book contains stories of many different kinds. Some of them have autobiographic elements, others are totally fictional. One piece is a fairy tale, another begins as a normal story and ends as a farce. A few of the stories have elements of magic realism. One story is about friendship between two university students in the 19th century, another about a nursemaid in Ireland in the 1950s who gets into “difficulties” and is brutally taken care of by nuns. The story that has given name to the collection, begins realistically, changes into magic realism and is from there written in a technique that I would call “double exposure” and then changes again into a dialogue as if from an Elizabethan play. The last story is an attempt to look into the life of young people, a group of Oxford students living together.
