A town of loners is beset by a recriminatory stranger in Carr’s debut novel.

Gloam Village is small and quiet place with fewer than 12,000 residents, many of them originally from the city, all looking for a place without crime or intrigue. “That was the promise of Gloam Village,” writes the author in the opening pages, “peace in exchange for privacy, safety earned by minding your own business and never asking questions you didn’t want answered.” Perhaps that is why some recent sightings have caused such a stir: A strange man dressed in black appears in the backyard of Afghanistan veteran Thomas Alcott’s house and starts antagonizing him about the men who died under his command; the same figure materializes outside the home of local bank manager Jules Monroe to mention the large amount of money she stole—money her brother eventually spent on the drugs that killed him. The apparitions are accompanied by a ringing in the ears and a pressure on the eardrums. Could they be indications of paranoia, a stress-induced hallucination, or something else? As more residents of Gloam have run-ins with “the prowler,” as the man is soon known, an atmosphere of suspicion pervades the town that was never there before. The authorities write it off as a case of mass hysteria, leaving it to the villagers themselves to solve the mystery. But can a town founded on the premise of privacy act in self-defense if it means everyone must divulge their greatest fears, private shames, and most closely guarded secrets? Carr tells the story in a measured, dispassionate prose that reads as ominous or funny depending on the situation. Here, a body is discovered buried in someone’s backyard: “Was the body they found now a child or an adult, people wondered…The mayor’s office and the lead investigator’s response was always the same three points: ‘The investigation is going remarkably well. We will release details as soon as we can. Please enjoy our beautiful village.’” Delightfully creepy and unpredictable, the novel deftly captures the claustrophobia and disconnection of small-town life.

A sometimes spooky, sometimes comic contemporary fable.

In Carr’s novel, an Argentinian project coordinator living in the United States struggles to find meaning in the aftermath of a horrific family tragedy.

The narrative traces one man’s course as he endures the loss of his wife and children in a house fire, which raged while he was at his boss’s sister’s funeral. Juan arrives home that night to find his loved ones dead and house destroyed, along with his purpose for living. As Juan stumbles though the ensuing months of inconsolable grief, very little helps him to make sense out of the apparently senseless devastation. As he tries to understand whether he could have altered the outcome of the day in question, he reexamines his own actions: Did his indecision about whether to take his young family to the funeral service cause the catastrophe? Or was it a consequence of Juan’s delay in arriving home, a result of his pulling off the road during a pouring rainstorm and spending some time with an odd stranger in a bar? In any case, how is he meant to go on with his own life now? In his quest for understanding, Juan is aided by friends and extended family members. A neighbor suggests that Juan may find a way to move forward by reading a mysterious book titled Kismet Wants a Do-Over, so he engages with that work’s thought experiments and parables, seeking new tools to re-engage with life and his job. Carr’s narrative relies upon flashbacks and summarization of plot points (as well as summations of Juan’s thoughts), which often interrupts the main storyline to distracting effect. However, the work has a meditative quality, as seen in a sly reference to Jorge Luis Borges, the author of the short story “Garden of the Forking Paths”; a character named Georges Bourges appears to shed light on the novel’s philosophical underpinnings. “The true burden of freedom, Juan, is that every path you choose erases all the paths you did not take.”

A thoughtful, if sometimes unpolished, novel about making sense of the senseless.