A mountain at the end of night

From the front inner book cover: Many of Caroline Glyn's novels have pointed in the direction of religious mysticism; now this present volume of stories confirms her ability to integrate faith with a fictional setting. Almost all the stories in this collection build up to some moment of transcendence, of deep illumination. There's the girl who finds innocence, trust and grace in the unicorn who comes to her on Good Friday morn; the rabbi who finds 'the fire of God' in the Temple at Jerusalem; the visitor to India who initially is frightened, even disgusted, by some aspects of Hinduism, but achieves understanding and reconciliation. On other levels, grace and joy are found in the precision of an opal-cutter, the goodness of a circus clown, the purchase of some fish from a market stall. And the moment of illumination can be reached by surprising routes: in a dancing marathon; in the vulgarity of publicity slogans; in the strange attempt of an irreligious Jew to bring an irreligious Christian to Judaism, only to succeed in bringing him to Christianity. CG is a writer with not only a theme but an interest in the hidden layers of the mind and their own mysterious ways of emerging. Her own religious sympathies are deep and exceptionally wide-ranging, and she writes with a beautiful clarity. Reading her book therefore becomes a moving experience on many levels.