Do the Blind Dream?: New Novellas and Stories

shows Gifford at the height of his powers, navigating with ease the new, more fragmented imaginative landscape of morning-after America. Gifford seems to have anticipated themes that suddenly are recognizable everywhere: the fragility of identity; the power of coincidence; the illusion of a secure tomorrow. In contrast to his often nightmarish, satirical, groundbreaking novels of the 1990s—Wild at Heart, Perdita Durango, and Night People among them— continues in the tender and deeply introspective vein revealed in two recent works: Gifford’s memoir (named a Notable Book), and the award-winning novella . From the intimate, stylistically daring examination of the darkest secrets in the history of an Italian family, to the terrible but often beautiful fears and discoveries of childhood, to the sardonic, desperate confusion of adult life, reveals an exceptionally versatile, highly tuned sensibility.