THE DRAMA ROOM

Searle’s short stories delve into the emotional messiness of the human experience.

This collection gathers slice-of-life vignettes that explore the complex and often untidy nature of emotion, with plots that range from mundane encounters to more dramatic events. “The Quiet Car,” in which a woman on a routine Amtrak ride loses her cool at her fellow passengers after receiving bad news, is followed by “Student Shooter,” in which a playwriting professor who longs to have a child becomes close to a disturbed student. Searle’s focus on conflicting emotions is especially evident in “When You Watch Me,” the story of Evvy, a 17-year-old in 1980s Arizona. She becomes infatuated with her summer college course professor, Barry; when she loses her virginity to Barry in his pool, his wife hides nearby and takes photos. Later, the wife mails the pictures to a now-adult Evvy. Though she was exploited, Evvy also derives a complicated sense of power from the experience. The titular story, “The Drama Room,” compellingly explores similar themes: In the 1980s, when PJ is a techie for her school’s drama department, the director, Ms. L., begins an inappropriate relationship with the show’s teenage star, Freddy. PJ—like most of Searle’s characters—takes the path of least resistance, laughing it off, only to regret the choice later. The Covid-19 pandemic is a motif that recurs throughout the work. “The Mask of the Red Death” follows a Massachusetts high school senior during the quarantine lockdown. Not taking the pandemic seriously, she spends spring break in Florida with friends. When she returns home, she is diagnosed with Covid-19; after unwittingly spreading the virus to her grandfather, she is isolated by her grief and depression. This story illustrates Searle’s ability to deftly capture a youthful voice in her prose: “They all stopped talking to you…when they asked you not to mention Grandad…Which you (coward that you are) didn’t wind up doing anyways, not wanting to get known as Arlington’s Typhoid-Whoever.”

Daring plots with evocative prose and complex characters.