All the echoes of memory and the rapidly disintegrating past come into play in Rebecca Goodman's beautiful meditative novel-a chamber piece for embattled voices that unfolds inside the natural world. The narrator, taking on different guises, tries to make sense of what it means to be alive, "these things I can think and feel." Goodman writes at perfect pitch, looking back, looking forward, on the border between holding on and letting go. I couldn't...