The Registry of Forgotten Objects

Coincidence and loss suffuse Harvey’s polished if underwhelming metafictional debut collection. In “The Drought,” a weatherman carries on an affair with his hair stylist under the nose of the stylist’s older husband, a barber who runs the salon with her. In “Beachcombers in Doggerland,” a married couple mourns their son’s death in a surfing accident, and the barber pole featured in “The Drought” washes ashore as they walk the beach. The narrator of “The Man Who Slept with Eudora Welty,” an apparent stand-in for the author (he describes publishing the abovementioned stories), recounts taking a train as a student many years earlier and reading a book by Eudora Welty, which prompted his seatmate to launch into an account of his alleged sexual exploits with Welty. Reflecting on the incident now, the narrator muses on details in Welty’s work that show up in his own life, “as if someone else is observing my life from the other side of the page.” Harvey wears his influences on his sleeve in other stories, too, summarizing multiple works by Welty and Edgar Allan Poe. The gestures at the classics are often clever, but Harvey’s ideas feel underbaked. This doesn’t add up to more than the sum of its parts. (Aug.)