The greatest paradox and most impressive achievement of Ric Couchman's novel is that the little boy, Hans Kindermann, shows himself to be more man than "the man" in the story, and he does so without compromising his own innocence. The book pulls back the curtains on Hans's moments of existence, providing vignettes that reveal a blurred but strikingly poignant portrait of the little boy from Water Street. Hans Kindermann is thrust suddenly into a violent, confusing, barely recognizable, yet fascinating world-a world which extends no farther than the perimeter of a small enclave of a tiny village in an obscure English-speaking South American country. Little Hans must make sense of his sudden insertion into this world, as well as make sense of the contradictions he encounters therein. Looming ominously in the backdrop of this seemingly inscrutable little landscape is "the man" whose unbridled brutality Hans witnesses and directly experiences, culminating in his having to make a rather tough decision. In the face of this inevitable confrontation, we ask with anxious curiosity: Does the little boy dare step outside the Universal? Does he "dare disturb the universe?" On the surface, we have here a psychological novel of white knuckled and steadily mounting intrigue, but on a more profound level, it presents a searching illumination of the human condition and offers to the attentive reader a heightened glimpse into the realization of self.