Over the past ten years I have had, perforce, to learn the art of speed reading but there are some books that cry out for a more measured response, and the works of Chris Arthur are an example. This collection of essays completes the trilogy begun with "Irish Nocturnes" and "Irish Willow", reviewed in these pages in May, 1999 and April 2002 respectively, and once again explores our place in the immensity of the universe, the way in which perspective changes and the impossibility of ever knowing exactly what has taken place at any given time in history.

The detective-like theme of "Obelisk" is a fascinating study into an ancestor of the author whose violent death has left many unanswered questions. Mr Arthur attempts to reach the truth by logical means - researching old newspapers and church records - and by more ephemeral means when he travels to the churchyard where the young man is buried and attempts to learn "a sense of what happened just by standing there".

In his quest to fulfil "the writer's task of weaving graspable meaning out of the tangle of things life throws at us", the author takes as his starting point a diverse collection of items or events, a fossilised part of a whale's ear, a chance encounter with a terrorist, a painting of a horse that has been in his family for generations. Two of the most affecting essays involve children; in "Safety and Numbers" he teases, from the stark facts of a short acquaintance with a child called Darlene, the way in which we are all dependent on the relationships we forge; he contemplates the seeming impossibility of the less than perfectly made child who lives in an "isolated, unwanted, permanently injured state". The sheer numbers of the earth's inhabitants and the millions of years that have preceded our present existence are recurring themes of Arthur's essays. In the final essay, "Swan Song", the author speaks with painful honesty of his stillborn son, endeavouring to find some meaning in the apparent random chance of life and death. As in all the essays, his careful choice of words and interesting progression of thought provide both a challenge and a path to deeper reflection.

(The Davies Group, ISBN 1-888570-78-4, pp234, $20.00)

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