Festival Days

4.5 stars, I think. Excellent, impactful writing.

This collection is really something. In the beginning author's note, Beard explains how some of these stories are true, and some are fiction – but that all fiction is truth, and all stories fiction. And so the collection unfolds, thematically and tonally consistent, a spell-binding melange of essay and short story in which one type is indistinguishable from the other.

Beard's voice reminds me of Joyce Carol Oates and Alice Munro, but a bit more sprawling and poetic. Each piece has death at it's center – or rather, the approach to death – and the moments, days, months, and years in which we evade it, stare it in the face, shepherd loved ones to it. Each piece is so poignant that I couldn't put the book down until that particular narrative came to its (beautiful) conclusion.