The old sun so careless of human woes, shone brightly every day. If Luke wept in his hell of misgivings, the sun came up and sped across the blue, glorying hotly in its strength and power just the same. Old trees rotted at the heart, and the sun nourished young saplings that quickly buried the struggling old forest-monarch in their shadows. The sun went on and on to his sky bed at night, pulling the grey and purple hangings of his couch about him and slept, indifferent to human tears.

Zora Neale Hurston is one of the most powerful voices in the literature canon. Her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, is one of the best books I've ever read, and easily one of the most beautifully written. I've been desperate to read more of her work and so decided to explore her short fiction.

With all short story collections, there are those that hit and those that miss, and even the best writers aren't immune to this. Unfortunately, there were quite a few stories in here that felt really out of place, and that isn't really Hurston's error. This is a collection of her short work put together and they don't flow particularly well. There are some pure gems in here, and, as ever, Hurston's prose gleams on the page but it wasn't the best reading experience as a whole. I much preferred the longer, more character focused stories such as Drenched in Light, Spunk, Magnolia Flower, Black Death, Muttsy, Sweat and Under the Bridge - they were definitely the strongest entries in this collection and, if you wanted to pick up Hurston's short stories, I'd recommend reading these. I definitely wouldn't advise reading the book cover to cover like I did.