Dark Satellites

These 12 quiet and powerful stories from Meyer (Bricks and Mortar) focus on intimacies between people on the margins, and on the social barriers that isolate people from one another. In “Late Arrival,” a railway employee and a hairdresser become close while spending long nights in the station bar after work. Over time, the women’s relationship becomes more serious, and they bend the rules of their jobs in order to send each other messages and spend more time together. In “The Crack,” a man’s apartment is broken into, but instead of reporting the crime, he wanders the streets and encounters an old woman who mistakes him for her grandson. In the deeply moving title story, a man who owns a burger bar grows close to an Arabic Muslim man in his apartment block and even closer to the man’s wife. In each tale, Meyer’s disorienting style highlights an uncanny element in the characters’ otherwise mundane moments, often to powerful effect. Scenes and conversations transition less than they cascade into one another—while geographies and time morph and dissolve from one line to the next. These strong, mysterious stories are worth revisiting. (May)