A Box of Matches stands as a brilliant example of the urge to write focused minutely on the quotidian. But author Nicholson Baker turns mundane activity into deep imaginative realms and far-fetched speculations: an inchoate blaze in a fireplace becomes a far-off corner of a violent universe; a burning Quaker Oats box becomes a coastal British fort. Such are the pathways of Baker’s mind and observations. And they prove once again that it’s not the subject matter that counts in fiction, it’s the...
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