Summary

The third of the four sections in “A Hundred Apocalypses,” “Through to Three Quarters” begins with a vignette titled “The Other Way Around.” The narrator declares “we came at last to the wackily fantastic land of opposites,” and ends his story with, “it was the end of all we’d known, and our hopes sank” (135). “Nice Day” follows, in which a narrator reads a book and wonders, “If I keep reading this book, is it just going to be more examples?” (136).

In “Hangings,” a narrator tells the story of a man inheriting clothes from his friend, after his friend has committed suicide. After exploring the suicidal man’s house (which is filled with masks), the man thinks, “He looked forward to wearing [the dead man’s clothes] as any other clothes are...