Somewhere a Long and Happy Life Probably Awaits You

Sexsmith's deft, penetrating debut collection embraces deadpan absurdity. In the title story, a man constantly losing track of his wife's whereabouts must deal with her impending death while she pours herself into saving an elm tree in which they eventually cohabitate. "The Problem with Babies" details one woman's transition from not wanting children to prematurely announcing to those around her that she's pregnant%E2%80%94trying on future possibilities as if they were garments in a store. In "A Box Full of Wildebeest," a woman treks around the world, from Kyoto to Siberia to the Serengeti, and is followed by her mother, who cites one debilitating ailment after another as an excuse to invade her daughter's life. The most affecting and unsettling story, "Downward Slump in the Prodigy Market," introduces Tulip, a piano prodigy sent to a special school to foster her talent not long before her roommate, Bea, a math prodigy, predicts an end to the public's interest in prodigies and their gifts. These 11 stories showcase impressive confidence and skill. The book doesn't end as strongly as it begins, but the stories remain of a high caliber right through to the end. (May)