No matter how different the places, times, and characters may be in the twelve prose texts of the genres of short stories, calendar stories, or crime stories, they are united by a tension between the experienced and the imagined world, under which the author shapes destinies that vary a central theme throughout. Like Lisa, the heroine of the titular story "Three Women by the Sea," the protagonists live and suffer in the here and now, fall back into past times, and long for other life designs. They stand as individuals for themselves; as fictional figures, they open up spaces for projections for the reader: of an individual or more general nature, such as faith, hope, and love as fundamental experiences of our existence – these three, which may remain (perhaps) just like their opposites.