Mark Gluth’s The Late Work of Margaret Kroftis is a short novel with a fractured narrative structure, but it is also a complete and awe-inspiring text, offering an acute and moving portrayal of grief’s powers. Opening with a disquieting scene about the reclusive writer of the title, as she is working on her final story, the book sets the stage for what it then becomes: an enchanted network of artists, tragedies, reveries, and mise-en-abymes built from a raging desire to rewrite mortality. Each page evokes the traumatic nature of loss and the stunning fact that life goes on when others die. But