John Gaskin

The Long Retreating Day John Gaskin

The ten atmospheric 'Tales of Twilight and Borderlands' which make up The Long Retreating Day are the stuff of things flickering at the edge of experience. We witness a student quarrel which long afterwards brings forth its own bitter harvest; ancient gods that live in human nature and are denied or worshipped at fearful cost; the power of the mind to create what it most dreads; hubris at its darkest in academic life; malevolence that can linger from the past; and the shadows cast by future events. Variously sardonic, dramatic, urbane and sinister, these stories are grounded in real landscapes and informed by the strengths and failings of the human spirit.