Birthday

Strange and macabre events animate the stories in this exquisite English-language debut from Egle. In “The Debt,” a pregnant mother of five attempts to calm herself after opening a threatening debt collection letter by tending to domestic tasks at her house in the forest. The story’s tragic arc is foreshadowed by the arrival of a small bird, which stares at her creepily from a windowsill. “The Duck” quickly swerves from a lighthearted romp about an office romance to a harrowing story of a stalker. The title character in “Aleksandra Is Beautiful” makes regular visits to her local library in her wheelchair, where she has a series of increasingly fraught interactions with a librarian who finds her attractive. In the remarkable and tense “Runaway Train,” a young woman returns home to celebrate the birthday of her younger brother, whose childhood room their alcoholic parents have kept as a shrine since he went missing years earlier. Egle blends realistic depictions of her windswept northern settings with a subtly off-kilter vibe, creating an unsettling effect. Readers will hope for more from Egle. (Mar.)