NOW I'M PHOTOGENIC AND OTHER STORIES I TELL MYSELF

Surreal images and emotional realities collide in this debut collection.

There’s a fine line between using the uncanny to accentuate real experiences and to distract from them. Thankfully, the stories in this book largely fall into the former category. Rosenberg’s characters are eminently recognizable—a parent whose child is away at camp for the first time, a woman concerned about medical findings—but the specifics of their circumstances take them to strange places. The protagonist of “The Twins” is the mother of two newborns until something bizarre happens: “The skinny one [eats] the fat one.” Things don’t get any less weird from there. The protagonist of “The Logic of Imaginary Friends” reunites with hers in adulthood after years of estrangement, and their bond takes on an unexpected intimacy. When the title character in “My Husband Story” enters a deep sleep, he slowly becomes more and more catlike. The images and conflicts in these stories are eye-catching on their own, but Rosenberg also introduces some subtler elements that give them greater resonance. It seems deliberate that the narrator of “The Logic of Imaginary Friends” tells us the name of her imaginary friend before revealing her own, for instance. Rosenberg also has a talent for punchy, revealing prose: “Once, the woman had a doctor who drew her blood himself. It was like having Ronald McDonald cook her fries.” While the imagery in these stories often heads into the fantastical, the anxieties and regrets the characters experience help keep them grounded. The result is a brief but potent collection that rarely goes where a reader might predict.

Stories that find the right balance between veracity and strangeness.