This small novel displays a new vision of language to describe human nature. It is highly readable - one is seduce by the simple beauty of Janet Kaufman's prose. The central character is a woman, and in her multiplicity of selves she is air, earth, water and fire. The language meanders slowly and gently like the barely-noticed tributaries of a small stream. There is delight in every image, as physicality is restored to language, and "lost geographies" are recovered

The cover blurb (most of which is reproduced above in this listing) isn't fair to this book. Don't be turned off, as I nearly was, by its glib, bouncy summary. The book itself is not glib, but neither is it "difficult." It's quiet, and drifts deeper into one's thoughts, like a piece of wood gathering water's weight and falling to a streambed. I was more struck by the father-daughter-(grand)daughter relationships than by the exploration of what it means to be or contain evil. However, in 85 short pages, I felt I got only enough of either theme to mull over, not enough to be captivated by.

In Places in the World a Woman Could Walk, author Janet Kauffman showed herself to be an author of great talent. In Rot she fulfills all that was "promised" by the earlier book. (Not that the intervening books are bad, they simply don't meet the high expectations set by the earlier work.) Rot is the final installment of a trilogy Flesh Made Word that includes Collaborators, The Body in Four Parts and Rot; however, Rot stands alone equally well.

Rot is an exploration of the death of a father, and an exploration of what death means to this particular father - a tobacco farmer, a pacifist, a Mennonite, a reader of biographies especially of dictators ... He is a man who does things "his way" whose friend and granddaughter are equally independent. He is philosophical but in a quiet, unobstrusive way - with a physicality of thought. And example: "My father tells me a person should not take longer to die than to be born. You slipped in, my father says. Your mother didn't blink."

The book plays the father-daughter relationship off Stalin/Svetlana (Stalin's daughter), off the relationship with the daughter revealing the complexity of the relationship and the variety of ways love is expressed and recognized/not recognized as well as how the same external actions may express power rather than love.

This a pure gem of a book, an excellent evening's read.

Years after first reading this collection the image of a woman baling hay, taking off her shirt and tying it to the tractor as a flag still remains in my mind. These short stories are far more conventional than her novels e.g. Body in Four Parts. Her characters, however, are already strong females - in this case rural females - who love and loose. The plots of the stories are common but the voice of the author, the characters she builds already show the strength apparent in her later works.

Her stories are much too pro-feminism. Her alphabet made of nude cherubs is filled with nothing but vulgar and explicit descriptions with no plot or purpose!

Fantastic! Incredibly imaginative, descriptive and connected. If you love stories, words and something that is always just cool, read this book.