Fans of Italo Calvino's fantastical urban creations in Invisible Cities, or of the philosophical parables of Borges, will surely enjoy Tim Conley's Eye of the Hawk, a short fiction recently published as a chapbook by BookThug. Conley's ludic tale of an elaborate game conducted in an unidentified nation bears some comparison to the story "Plot" from Conley's accomplished debut collection, Whatever Happens. Both narratives suggest that, despite being given a vast amount of detail about a given event, language is ultimately inadequate, and one is always left with a sense of uncertainty. Eye of the Hawk is the second installment in BookThug's new Department of Narrative Studies series, the first of which was Marianne Apostolides's smart and stylish Swim.
