An Orphanage of Dreams

In “My Writing Life: A Confession in Fable,” one of this collection’s 18 quirkily surreal stories, Savage (It Will End with Us) refers to the ideas that he transcribes into fiction as “the noises within, the whistling and muttering.” They produce compact tales of characters grappling with preoccupied states of mind, as in “The Awakening,” in which the narrator’s obsessive concern with his malfunctioning toaster oven keeps him from leaving his home, or “An Affair of the Heart,” in which a man cannot escape the crushing weight of the memory of his wife’s love affair years before. In “Wallflower,” a man overcomes his social awkwardness only when he dons a bear costume for a New Year’s Eve party, while in “Sky,” a couple sense that their repetitive lives have been scripted. “Animal Crackers,” a composite of five paragraph-length vignettes, endows different animals with human sentiments and feelings. Savage’s narratives are bravura displays of authorial concision and meticulous detail, seen most notably in “22 Stories,” whose 22 separately titled paragraphs each read like a compressed novel. Readers will enjoy this collection for its clever and piquant appraisals of what the author refers to as “the mystery of the world.” (Jan.)