BOYS BUY ME DRINKS TO WATCH ME FALL DOWN

In “Who’s a Good Girl?” one of 18 stories here, tech salesman Dante unilaterally decides to take his family off the grid. He, his wife, Arlene, and their two kids, isolated in the West Virginia mountains, give up streaming services and social interaction with friends. But life away from the city can’t erase the problems that already exist in the couple’s marriage. Women are the main characters in nearly all of these tales, which delve into such topical issues as self-identity and the male gaze. In “Rebound,” the narrator is at a voguish club and surrounded by people covered in lavish beauty products. It’s not long before she craves the so-called “ugly” underneath—all the natural imperfections that provide a sense of individuality. Although men can be callous boyfriends or, as in the title story, third-rate pickup artists, many have little relevance to the women’s personal journeys. Anne Marie, in “The Rapture of Anne Marie Abbot,” is a pastor’s wife who takes a discreet look at her sexuality. She quietly attends Sex Addicts Anonymous and braves the depths of online pornography. Still other characters deal with profound loss from a loved one’s death. The closing story, “Stayin’ Alive,” follows law-firm receptionist Emily, who, by sheer happenstance, performs CPR on several people over the course of about a month. She’s worried that these situations keep turning up but even more concerned that the people she tries to save don’t survive.

Although Dickson James rarely strays from gloomy territory, her book explores a range of subgenres. For example, Karin, who narrates “Sommelier Mort Vivant,” is a zombie, though she prefers the term “Second Lifer.” She coolly describes the best way to reach a victim’s brain and advocates eating the tastier brains of smart people. Similarly, “The Easy Chair” is the Kafkaesque tale of Fritz, an engineer preoccupied with building the greatest of all easy chairs. The one he ultimately designs offers equal parts comfort and agonizing pain—not unlike his own complicated relationships. However, even occasional supernatural elements or moments of surrealism don’t distract from the no-nonsense portrayal of the main characters. They’re grounded and relatable even when they’re nameless. Although men mostly play smaller roles, they occasionally receive more character development; in “The Girl in the Piñata,” for instance, the meek Walter gets a huge multiple-box shipment of party supplies erroneously delivered to his porch and earns himself an unexpected friend. Dickson James’ crisp prose energizes her stories, which readers will speed through with relish. In “Zeros and Ones at the Funk You Festival,” for example, a server at a music festival narrates, “I’ve had two weeks of 12-hour shifts, and I just want to rest my body, turn off my brain, forget all of the runny eggs and ketchup bottles I delivered to hundreds of tables, all while fending off the leering manager who thinks that I find his groping hands flattering.”