NIGHT MOVES

Recklessness and depraved scenarios underpin Dillian’s short stories.

In “Glowing,” the collection’s best story, Logan, a university student spending the summer in her childhood home “with the awful TV and the shag carpets” shakes up the doldrums by peeking in the windows of neighbors at night. Logan’s voyeurism isn’t sexually motivated; her thrills come from the risk of being caught. Becoming more brazen, she skinny-dips in someone’s pool and then, still naked, disturbingly watches a young girl playing with Barbie dolls. The author’s writing is at its strongest when he situates readers in settings or delivers moments of absurdity. “Creep” tells the tale of a meteorologist who agrees to a date with a fan. After noticing her fan’s wristwatch has a poop emoji on it, she learns he’s a gastroenterologist and that he owns many scatologically-themed objects, including a pool floatie, throw pillows, and business cards. “Most of the time it isn’t too bad,” he tells her. “It’s when they’ve eaten a—hrm—porterhouse the night before that things get ugly.” With few exceptions, the characters feel familiar from story to story. The men—among them aging rockstars, a pimp, a dentist, and financial workers—are largely libidinous and careless, and they exhibit derogatory views of women. The women tend to be analogous, with descriptors boiled down to their appearances and ages (usually they are much younger than the men they encounter); they include betrayed wives, sex workers, and a pseudo-Instagram model. The collection explores tough subjects such as mental illness, addiction, adultery, and death. Among the handful of tales that break the mold is “Left Out,” about an overbearing dad whose son is robbed of a spot on the Little League All-Star team. The stories are plot-heavy and fall a bit short on emotion and tension as they move toward ambiguous endings. Unsavory portrayals of females aside, these key missing ingredients may be the biggest flaw here.  

A somewhat brash volume of uncomfortable stories that show intermittent hints of promise.