The Renovator

A fascinating and relevant short-story about a man's own conflict about whether to help, or not to help. The author really brings out a complex within the character who is undoubtely flawed about whether to help is the right thing to do and whether that helping is assisting in making the character feel worse for not doing more. It explores an interesting concept and I would be very interested in reading a 'sequel' that sees this concept expanded further. I particularly liked the main character's conflict of feelings and thoughts in juxstaposition of the final section of the piece as it is so representative of people in the real world where they are sympathetic to tragic events at the time and then return to their normal routine. It demonstrates how conditioned we are as humans to tragedy that we can understand when events are terrible but still return to our normal state of minds and carry out normal and mundane tasks.