[The luminous short stories in Sliding] have the coherence of a novel. They are linked not by plot but by place and point of view. Most of them begin with a seemingly transient happening that signifies something much larger in the narrator's past. The title story, about a group of boys sliding on a frozen pond, captures the freshness of a first time experience and its bittersweet memory….

All of the stories spring from the soil of the Welsh countryside, where even trivia is given a special radiance…. The quintessential story of the book—"Cocksfoot, Crested Dog's Tail, Sweet Vernal Grass"—refers to the grasses that border the village cemetery. The names of these grasses summon up the narrator's memory of "old intangible summers" before his father died; Mr. Norris compresses the turning points of a lifetime into his story beautifully. This and the other 13 interludes are a...