Jeanne Thornton's Reviews > The Passing: Stories

Some of the stories, particularly the one about the washerwoman and the process by which Farm Soap is made, have the opposite effect of the one the author intended: making us nostalgic about the passing of rural culture in favor of homogenized TECHNO-UTOPIA. I am fine with TECHNO-UTOPIA if it doesn't mean total brute servitude, the draining of all decadent color from life in favor of the grim expectation of endless physical labor for pure survival (the nature of the labor determined strictly by gender, because what more logical sorting mechanism could there be.) Some of the stories--the last one, "Tools," "Men of Worth"--work pretty much as intended. I'm a sucker for this kind of book: a really close reading of different minutiae, food items or tools or whatever, and an explication of their meaning for THE HUMAN SOUL.