Amora

Polesso’s bittersweet collection (after Control) explores the highs and lows of life for a series of Brazilian lesbians. In “My Cousin’s in Town,” an unnamed narrator invites her co-workers over for dinner, and when her girlfriend, Bruna—who was supposed to be traveling—comes out of their bathroom wrapped in a towel, the narrator introduces Bruna as a cousin to keep her sexual identity a secret. In “Dreaming,” Raquel, a businesswoman whose friends find her “shockingly tedious,” stuns them with a story from her time living in San Francisco in her 20s, when, naked and drunk during a house party, she sneaked into a celebrity’s pool and hooked up with a “blonde, leggy, tanned” woman with “surfer’s cheeks.” “Renfield’s Demons” tells the gut-punching story of Débora, who comes home unexpectedly and finds her partner, Moira, entangled with another woman on the living room floor. A week later, to combat her depression, Débora goes to a costume party where she has sex with a woman dressed as a vampire, who draws real blood when she bites. With brevity, abstraction, and narrative tension, Polesso offers a poignant look at women alternately broken down and resilient. Fans of Lucia Berlin will love these tense and twisty tales. (May)