Sinclair is a realist, however, and understands that not everything which has been broken can be repaired. In “Portrait of my Uncle” she explores a relationship, much like that between her and her mother, which has become toxic by its unrelenting proximity and how the mental trauma of that toxicity manifests in physical symptoms. “Where Their Fire Is Not Quenched,” perhaps Sinclair’s most famous tale, takes this realism into a more metaphysical arena as the increasingly nightmarish unlives of Oscar and Harriot, corrupted by guilt and lust, crack and repeat and crack once more into a chilling vision of one’s own, personal Hell; “We shall be one flesh and one spirit,” Oscar explains. “One sin repeated for ever and ever; spirit loathing flesh, flesh loathing spirit; you and I loathing each other.” There is something deeply horrible about “Where Their Fire Is Not Quenched,” far more vile than any more traditional vision of punishment or purgatory, that’s made only more intense by the matter-of-fact way the story unfolds.