The author of ["Kindergarten," a] most unusual, reverberant yet at times precious novel is a young English schoolteacher. He has assembled an intricate, hybrid short fiction, a sort of extraordinary toy boat that voyages onto the dark waters of the suffering of innocents (in fairy tales, Nazi Germany, modern-day terrorism), bearing the flags of childhood and family, of self-knowledge and hope….

Through 190 pages … Mr. Rushforth has threaded not only numerous epistles (imaginary, I presume), but also—to make a partial, various list—several entire Grimm's fairy tales …; selections from German and English children's books, from "The Diary of Anne Frank," from "The Children's Haggadah"; songs and poems in German; detailed references to Shakespeare's "The Winter's Tale" and Breughel's painting, "Children's Games"; as well as enumerations of certain household items….

All this incorporated material transforms "Kindergarten" into a sort of holographic collage, where things resonate into various dimensions—the...