Small Odysseys

Tinti (The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley) delivers a dynamic anthology drawn from the Selected Shorts public radio program. “Sleepless” by Michael Cunningham explores the lives of the narrator and his lover as they rent a ramshackle waterfront house for a few days with their ailing dog and a friend they “rescued” from her minimum wage job. In “Bedtime Story” by Victor LaValle, the narrator camps with his eight-year-old son, Kai, in the hallway of their nearly empty New York City apartment building during Covid-19 (“We were utterly unguarded. It felt like lying flat on a raft in the middle of the sea”). Lauren Groff’s “Such Small Islands” follows the evolving relationship between young, sickly Aura and her older half-sister, Gus, who travels to care for her on a fancy vacation island. The bittersweet “Almost Everything,” by Etgar Keret perfectly captures the fleeting triumph a man feels as his wife cherishes his 49 gifts from around the world for her 49th birthday—before a friend reminds him of the looming milestone next year and questions what can be done to surpass this effort. Tinti cleverly arranges the stories into “Departures,” “Journeys,” and “New Worlds,” and most hit their marks. Short story fans will enjoy the abundance of talent on offer. (Mar.)