Size of the Universe

The landscape of this novel in stories-Joseph Cardinale's first book-length work of fiction-is as familiar as childhood yet beguilingly surreal. The question of whether or not the child in the first fiction and the man in the last story are the same person-and whether any person is the same from one moment to the next-is perhaps the book's main question. In prose as spare as it is meticulous, The Size of the Universe conjures an elegant labyrinth of time, space, and memory, in which a wavering self, a self on the verge of becoming nothing, seeks a safe haven from the throes of near-religious ecstasy. It is a debut work that is inviting, perplexing, and bold.