The Narrow Window

A Writer Shed Review

There’s a term used to describe prose that, for some, might first appear to be a level of criticism. It is not for me. Far from it. It is praise.

The word is “quiet.”

I became familiar with Gary D. Wilson’s work when I read his award-winning collection of short stories, For Those Who Favor Fire. The characters, carefully rendered, are taken directly from the honest and meticulous examination of humanity’s complications. To deliver stories that resonate with a shared humanity, an author must allow the weight of a story, the weight of the world, to settle in, to seep through the skin to places of the heart. That takes time and quietude. Wilson does this magnificently in his collection of stories.

And he does it again in his novel The Narrow Window.

Although, I would suggest, the novel is not as quiet as his short stories, as it employs a level of suspense, but the characters are drawn with the same pen — with empathy, heartbreak, belonging, and quietness of spirit. The events in The Narrow Window are both disturbing and impactful, set in the backdrop of the turbulent 1960s and an unsettled Africa, with the evolution of the characters coming as it does for all of us — through pain and suffering, and the slow, steady beat of heartbreak.

The story is about two young Americans wrestling with their beliefs, their motivations, and their loyalties after an unspeakable act of personal violence upends their lives while teaching abroad, all as an enormous shift has forever knocked the American cultural landscape off balance. The story is a page-turner, and one that engages the reader to consider what we all are willing to embrace and what we are willing to let go. It’s a story that carries with it mystery and a visceral unsettledness, challenging you to consider what truly matters in a life, and what ultimately lifts us and scars us.

And Wilson does all of this in a methodical and unputdownable narrative. A kind of quiet prose, yes, but also magnificently gripping.

The Narrow Window is now available from Collective Ink Books.