By his own admission, Mathias Freese has a dark view of humanity. DOWN TO A SUNLESS SEA is a collection of short stories, written from 1974 to the present, that undoubtedly backs up Freese’s statement. His troubled characters are described as “deviant and damaged.”  The stories are like photographs where the subject is staring off to one side of the camera with a perplexing expression on their face – leaving the observer of the photograph to wonder about what’s left out, or in this case, about the rest of the story. 

Freese’s collection centers around relationships, especially the relationship of his characters to themselves and to others. Having spent many years as a social worker and psychotherapist, Freese apparently doesn’t lack for curious topics to explore. The characters in the stories vary wildly - from that of a 9-year-old child, to a person suffering from OCD, to a rebellious teen with deep insight into human personality in spite of his learning disability - and Freese powerfully demonstrates a knack for adapting the voice of the story to the narrating character. His impressive variety of writing styles adds greatly to the collection’s appeal. 

While most of the stories are dark, cynical, and unsettling, they are also brutally honest and show a keen insight into what truly drives us as human beings. His writing and perspective has been shaped profoundly by the Holocaust which, according to the foreword, Freese considers to be the most important event in human history. My favorite story of the collection, Alabaster, is about an old woman with a number permanently displayed upon her once-alabaster skin. 

Unanswerable is an excerpt from Freese’s book The i Tetralogy, an award-winning historical novel about the Holocaust, and describes the relationship of a son with his father, who worked in the concentration camps. 

Not by any means a light-hearted collection, Freese’s stories leave the reader thinking, pondering, and wondering.  DOWN TO A SUNLESS SEA is an interesting book full of fascinating and somewhat disturbing tales.