Dust to Dust

Is it the dust of death, blowing across a Mediterranean island, and etched by the footprints of a small boy who seems to be a disturbing emblem of his parents’ unhappy marriage? Or the fine, but offending dirt that is dealt with so tidily by a diligent hausfrau – almost as tidily as her fellow neighbors rationalize a brutal crime? In Dust to Dust, Timothy Findley is a master of mortality and the powerful, yet often imperceptible bond it forges with memory and reality. In this brilliant new collection of short stories – his first since the highly acclaimed Stones – Timothy Findley weaves his storytelling spell around a thematically linked collection of stories that move. literally, from dust to dust. Readers will remember Vanessa Van Home, the elderly detective from The Telling of Lies , now involved in a murder mystery where a corpse confounds the line between the magical and the mundane. And the unforgettable Rosedale couple from Findleys “Minna and Bragg” stories, who reappear in two more haunting tales. In the stories that make up “All Must Come to Dust,” we are taken into the ancient cultures of Europe, and there confronted by our preconceived notions of what constitutes history and memory. Each work in Dust to Dust is a beautifully rendered showcase for Timothy Findley’s immense talent in evoking a time, a place and a mood. With their European settings, these stories render a territory formerly unexplored by Findley in his Short Fiction repertoire.