Carrie Jane Knowles

Apricots in a Turkish Garden is a rare and beautiful collection of short stories, artfully crafted with their careful labors as hidden as the garden itself. The powerfully evocative vignettes carry their stings, not in the tail, but in the telling, drawing the reader deep into the minds and hearts of wounded characters, and freeing them, like apricots pulled from the tree. The final story, richly scented and introspectively thoughtful, forms a perfect ending to the collection, inviting the reader to ponder what really matters, what’s really real, and what, really, should a writer bother to write.

World-spanning, generation-leaping, covering life and death and all in between (or maybe beyond), this is a collection that feels almost effortless and natural, belying the labors and the peoples within its pages. It’s a book to savor, just like those Turkish apricots, and these stories well deserve their accolades.

Disclosure: I found this when it was free and I offer my honest review.… (altro)