Softie

Howell debuts with a beautiful and striking collection about friendship, secrets, and unspeakable desires. “Lobes,” the outré opener, explores the narrator’s obsession with her lover’s earlobes, to the point that she fantasizes about biting or cutting them off (with his consent) and keeping them as trophies. In “Cherry Banana,” a woman takes a receptionist job at a seedy hotel, where she begins shacking up with long-term guest Henry, who pines for his runaway daughter and lives in the room she’d once checked into with her deadbeat lover. The fantastical “Age-Defying Bubble Bath” follows middle-aged Alda, who’s anxious about her wrinkles. After Alda overdoes it with a bottle of high-strength de-wrinkling bubble bath, the bubbles’ serum causes her to reverse-age into a little girl. “Kitty and Tabby” concerns one girl coping with body dysmorphia and another who claims to be a shape-shifter yearning to give birth to a boy. Throughout, Howell’s discontented characters often settle for a twisted sense of intimacy (as a character in “Devil’s Juice” says to her friend about her lover: “I don’t know if I love him. I just hate him less than everyone else”). These vivid and harrowing stories are tough to shake. (Dec.)