LISTEN TO THE STARS

Mukherjee’s tales illustrate the vast chasm between inner and outer life, but also how intimate a relationship can be with a stranger.

There’s a very old short story form in which the main character meets a stranger who tells a story that’s too compelling not to repeat. Five of the six tales in Mukherjee’s collection use this format; the outlier, “Smile Without Reason,” perhaps doesn’t because its main plot device—a virus that triggers random acts of violence—absolutely forbids it. Even in the table of contents, the author introduces stories as if they’re interesting strangers. In “Flow With the Tide,” Cesar, an American businessman in Tokyo, meets Annie, a younger Japanese woman who’s searching for her American father, whom she’s never known. Readers will feel time and geography, memory and desire, pulling in different directions, an underlying complexity that’s sometimes subtly obscured by the traditional structure. “Another World” effectively turns the format sideways as Brett Engler, college professor and professional poker player, meets journalist Drew Casey outside his Las Vegas condo; fully half the story consists of their discussion of games of chance, skill, and life. In “Click for Romance,” two men meet on a plane bound for Shanghai from Chicago, and Mukherjee’s readers are treated to a treatise on online dating. Fittingly, the form hits its high point in the last, titular story, which threads the entire collection’s many themes through the words of elderly professor Avtar, who shares a table by chance with Liz, who’s traveling alone on business. When Liz later tells her husband, Liam, about the man, Liam recognizes him as a famous lecturer, and they fly out to San Francisco to unwind his gentle riddles. “Never Alone” is clearly the dark horse and dark heart of the collection. In it, Ajay Raj’s son, who has schizophrenia, sees the story title as a description of the constant voices in his head; Ajay never feels more alone than when he’s with his son—a soul-crushing irony.

An exploration of a common story setup that yields significant rewards.