Jim Shepard's "Master of Miniatures" is a masterful miniature, a small container filled with substantial events and substantial pleasures. Based on the life of Eiji Tsuburaya, the special effects man who made it possible for us to enjoy Godzilla destroying Tokyo, it's the story of that destruction, the seismic destruction of Tokyo in 1923, the aerial destruction of Tokyo in World War II, the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and also the destruction that those catastrophes wreak on Tsuburaya's marriage.
The novel begins with the disaster of Tsuburaya's marriage. Having forgotten Tanabata, the Star Festival, the one day of the year the two stars, Altair and Vega — the two lovers — can come together, he wonders, "at which he was more adept: hurting Masano inadvertently or intentionally."
The Tsuburayas, we learn, had, once during their long-distance courtship, identified with the star-lovers. The day the lovers come together had been special for them. The brief period of togetherness the couple enjoyed, however, has ended. Now, after the death of their daughter "they each put in longer days, he in his innovations and his wife in her grieving."