REVIEW: “The Gift” by M. John Harrison

Review of M. John Harrison, “The Gift”, in Settling the World: Selected Stories 1970-2020, with a foreword by Jennifer Hodgson (Comma Press, 2020): 27-48 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the Review of the anthology.

I found this story strange: When I first read it, I was deeply entranced by the alternating pictures of the lives of Sophia and Peter, their separate threads and their interwining events. And yet, within a week or so of reading it, I found I could remember almost nothing of it. Ephemeral, not substantial; beautiful while it lasted, but then gone.

(First published in Other Edens, 1988.)