FIRST AID FOR CHOKING VICTIMS

People confront their imperfect selves in Müller’s debut collection of short stories.

In one episode from Müller’s new collection, a high schooler’s world is overturned when his best friend—a skilled basketball player whom people call “Mr. Perfect”—is run over by a train. Confused and upset by his friend’s apparent suicide, someone tells him that maybe he can be the new Mr. Perfect, which sets him to thinking about what was going through his friend’s mind at the end. In the title story, a junior high school girl refuses to go with her mom to Mass anymore—in part to protest the woman’s hesitance to “let her in,” following a recent stillbirth. While at home, the girl experiences an unexpected awakening involving the boy next door and learns a few things about her laconic father. In a third piece, “Tornado Warning,” a rare tornado alert in Western Massachusetts finds a housesitting couple in a dire situation of their own making, during which they discover that they don’t know each other as well as they thought. Across these eight stories, Müller portrays characters confronted by fears of isolation and inadequacy, very often in close proximity to others. Many of the tales follow young people as they navigate tricky rites of passage: first relationships, unethical jobs, even fears of swimming. Müller’s stories, which tend to run on the longer side, afford plenty of space to get into the psychology of his characters. The longest piece, and one of the best, “I Want You to Tell Me,” follows a sensitive college student as she travels upstate to meet her boyfriend’s blue-collar parents, a situation that slowly unravels as she attempts to convince them of her depth and substance. “I wanted to know what it was for you, what your truth is,” she asks her boyfriend’s father, a landscaper whom she decides is a kind of artist. “For some dumb reason I thought you had it. The big truth. All of it. That you had understood. Am I making sense?” There is much to admire in these probing, insightful tales, and plenty that points to a talented novelist waiting to break out.

An impressive set of character-driven tales.