BIG BAD

Magical realism and realism that’s not quite realistic mingle in this debut collection of 13 stories.

Death reorders the lives of those left behind; that’s the idea at the heart of many of the stories in Collins’ collection. In “Sunday,” Paul, who feels responsible for his son’s death, punishes himself first by losing both arms in an “accident” and then by marrying a woman with a “marathon mouth” whose incessant talking distracts him from having to remember his past. In “Drawers,” one of the collection’s standouts, Lawrence is driving to his grandson’s circumcision ceremony when he slams into a horse. Undone by his wife’s recent death, which brings back memories of his mother’s death and how his father coped, Lawrence begins to reckon with how little he has allowed himself to live. Many of these stories tilt toward magical realism. That’s the case in “Big Bad,” a feminist revision of “Little Red Riding Hood” in which a woman gives birth to older and older versions of herself, each a little more liberated than the last. Elsewhere, magical plots (one about a woman who keeps finding hearts) come at the expense of character development, and stories like “Stone Fruit” and “Lonelyhearts” feel quite slight. But when Collins flirts with magic, rather than fully embraces it, she captures the myriad ways the real world is mysterious—filled with both wonder and terror. In “The Horse Lamp,” another gem, a satellite repairman named Jarrod is seduced by a customer who wants him to help her get pregnant. As she gradually reveals her real reasons for wanting a baby, Jarrod absorbs her trauma, and the story becomes a cautionary tale about the power of storytelling and our very human desire to believe what we hear.

Beautifully written, wildly imaginative stories.