Stephen Minot: 2 books

Manipulation of time is a recurring theme in Stephen Minot’s second collection of stories. The first four stories, subheaded “Time and Memory,” deal with characters whose perception of the world is skewed. Kraft, a social historian, becomes so drawn to a woman from a simpler era that he almost...

From the contemporary angst of Ghost Images (1979), Minot now turns to a neat blend of allegory and Biblical revisionism. Ham, Noah’s third and youngest son, is the narrator and there are elements, he wants us to know, that the Official Version of the story has left out. The scorn, for instance, with which Noah’s idea for the ark was met from within the family.