Honeydew by Edith Pearlman: one of the most essential short-story visionaries of our time.

The stories in «Honeydew» are unmistakably by Pearlman; whole lives in ten pages. They are minutely observant of people. Of their foibles and failings, but also of their moments of kindness and truth.

The characters are dazzling. Somalian women who have suffered circumcision, a special child with pentachromatic vision, a professor of Latin unsettled by a random invitation to lecture on the mystery of life and death.

Pearlman knows each of them intimately and reveals them with generosity.