Australian writer Gail Jones?s short story, ?The House of Breathing,? is haunted by the marvelous and doomed beauty of the Titanic, the ghostly ship that shadows every transatlantic crossing. In the story, the wondrously splendid trappings of the ship boast a version of vault, ?a church-sized dome of glass and steel? This finely crafted collection of fourteen short stories, the second by Australian writer Gail Jones to appear in the United States, confirms her as a sophisticated writer of profound and distinctive vision. Traversing a broad range of subjects--cultural imperialism, sexuality, politics, the visionary power of language--Jones explores the often painful intersections between these issues and the personal lives of her characters.