THE OPEN DOOR

Across 23 short stories, Piatigorsky explores how characters attempt to find meaning in their lives, often with other people’s help.

In the titular story, a perennially out-of-place divorce lawyer decides to take charge of his life and make a connection with someone. In “Carved Stone,” a woman takes refuge in her Inuit sculpture collection when genuine human connection escapes her. Literary magazine editor Sylvia battles her self-critical inner voice and decides whether to embark on editing her estranged father’s short story. A recurrent theme is the desire of characters to produce art; the collection opens with “Not for Everyone,” in which a husband asks his wife about the potential of his writing career: “Why do I spend all this time writing?” he asks. “There are so many books, stories, essays, poems, on and on. What’s the value of another?” At least part of the value of short stories, Piatigorsky’s tales seem to find, is in the act of processing the world through fiction, as when the writer Ernest Worthington is interviewed in “The Open Door” and describes how “everyone else’s stories became my book.” Later in the volume, the tales increasingly take a turn towards the surreal. “Mr. Pushkin” adopts the perspective of an English bulldog searching for meaning as a show dog. “Immobilon” describes a man who dies of the titular, paralytic plague,only to continue to observe the world around him post-cremation;the story “My Funeral” also features a consciousness continuing after death.

Piatigorsky presents readers with a carefully ordered collection. Over the course of these tales, key themes of art, aborted love, and anxiety appear early on, absurdist notes gradually emerge, and death becomes a clear theme only toward the end, as if to better cast a shadow over the scenes that came before. The collection closes on a short series of works about facing death, ending on “Notes Going Underground,” in which a man delivers his own eulogy, even though he’s “still partially alive and only partially dead”; the closing sentiment is one of acceptance. The execution of all these ideas is, as is natural with short story collections, successful to varying degrees, depending on the tale at hand. Although the technique of having fictional characters debate the merits of fiction is frequently compelling, it runs the risk of making characters feel less like people and more like representations of some grand theory of writing. At other points—as with “Love Contraception” and “The Ugly President”—fascinating ideas lose some of their intrigue, due to a heavy-handed moral or philosophical message. Some of the shorter stories are expertly self-contained, as with “Guilt,” which features a sucker-punch comedic twist, but many others—such as “Buddies,” about two high-school classmates nicknamed “Champ” and “Nerdie”—lack enough emotional development to warrant their inclusion. A stronger edit might have resulted in a set of sharper, more consistent tales, which would have allowed the author’s perspective to shine brighter.

An expansive collection that includes some true gems, despite inconsistent presentation.