-- The Presence of Absence Infused with poetic clarity and graced with humor, Simon Van Booy's innovative novella asks us to find beauty'even gratitude'in the cycle of birth and death. Stripped of artifice, The Presence of Absence Simon Van Booy is not only a master storyteller but a writer whose fiction is rich with philosophical insights into things both mapped and undiscovered. The Presence of Absence parts the darkness to reveal what has been just out of sight all along.