Chazzbot's Reviews > Billie Dyer and Other Stories

Beautifully written collection of semi-autobiographical stories. Throughout the book, Maxwell emphasizes the power of personal narrative over history and other, supposedly objective, accounts of human activity. "The past is always being plowed under," he reminds us, arguing that without stories, our lives are subject to the random, unreliable, and incomplete records of dry history. Maxwell's stories, appropriately enough, do not follow a straightforward narrative path, but wander engagingly through the perspective of their narrators (who seem to be, in most cases, thinly disguised versions of Maxwell himself). Maxwell's collection resonates far beyond the length of this slim, but thoroughly engaging, volume.