CHANCE TO FADE & OTHER STORIES

Rank presents a solid collection of contemporary short stories about characters who feel stuck in moments of crisis.

These 15 pieces circle similar themes from a range of perspectives. Most of the protagonists are men at a crossroads, as in “Patio,” in which a man who’s “been on edge for months. Nervous. Anxious,” struggles to communicate his true feelings to his ex-girlfriend when she stops by. Sometimes the stories are told from other points of view, as in “The Rain” which employs the first-person perspective of a wife of someone working through a second attempt at college; the pair are also trying to keep their house literally afloat after heavy rains and flooding. Similarly, “Near the Tree Line” is about divorced parents David and Hannah, observed via the third-person perspective of their son, Chase. There are some flashes of humor throughout these tales; Chase, for instance, names his dog Brexit, simply because he likes the way the word sounds: “‘Do you know what Brexit even is?’ asked David with a rare smile on his face. Chase nodded. ‘It’s my dog.’” The shortest works are closer to character sketches and often a bit stranger, as in the aptly named “I Collect Teeth.” The longer stories—“Fireworks” and “Chance to Fade”—show the most range, capturing subtleties of family relationships, grief, and memory. The title story is the most structurally interesting, offering a quietly devastating portrayal of a man navigating the aftermath of his fiancée’s death and struggling to distinguish between reality and hallucination. Although the stories here are often sad, they have a pleasantly smooth style. With few exceptions, Rank delivers sturdy, non-fussy prose, very much in the tradition of late-20th-century short fiction, with moving moments and epiphanies that bring aspects of Raymond Carver’s work to mind.

A promising set of tales that will have readers looking forward to more of Rank’s work.