The stories in
Transubstantiation
are windows that the characters peer through, hoping to see more clearly. They're in the real world but their reality is skewed - things disappear, people change or vanish, ideas that seemed irrefutable are swept away. "There are bad people in the world," Dove tells her daughter in "Dove and Ellie," a warning that she's not sure will do any good. The places they live hold the imprint of their lives, and that imprint keeps hold of them. They dream and sometimes their dreams follow them out of sleep. The characters are struggling, but even so, they don't give up. "Are we dead?" they ask, but they keep talking. They keep looking, as Irene does in "Going to Moonville," hoping to feel "the lightness and space next to her heart."