Diving Board

Opening Diving Board is like waking in a white room with no doors or windows. A question resonates as one reads these stories: How did Toms Downey place me here so perfectly, and why is it that I don't want to leave?Agustina Bazterrica, author of Tender is the Flesh and The UnworthyToms Downey writes from the edge of the abyss. A little girl disappears midair; a horse grows from a seed; a war widow receives a visit of condolence, over and over and over again. In The Astronaut a man has become weightless, bobbing around on the ceiling, nauseated every time he is brought down and tethered to the earth. But the question here is not how or why, its what happens next? The astronaut wonders Will I burn like an asteroid or drown in the void of space? just as all of Downeys stories reside in that threatening, destabilizing moment when all connection is lost. The world is filled with an ever-thickening mist, an old love haunts the living, making fruit rot in the bowl, and resolution isnt offered or even soughtthe human condition is queasy, fretful, absurd. All we can hope for is the leap into the unknown.