SOURCE: Skiles, Don. Review of A Transparent Tree: Fictions, by Robert Kelly. American Book Review 9, no. 1 (January 1987): 16.

In the following review of A Transparent Tree, Skiles claims that the prose in this volume is “highly metaphorical, metaphysical, and mystical.”

This is Robert Kelly's forty-third published book, his first collection of short fiction. He previously published a novel, The Scorpions (1967). A Transparent Tree is a book of “fictions”; it certainly is not the usual volume of short stories. The book consists of three novellas and six shorter pieces. Obviously, each piece has distilled over a long time; several—notably “A Winter's Tale”—resemble compendiums made up of journal or daybook entries. Much of the work here could, in fact, be termed micro-stories.

A Transparent Tree is an apt title. Kelly is interested in showing us the warp and woof of simultaneity, chance, asynchronicity coming together in the dense structures...