Heartbreaker

Meijer’s debut collection is a showcase for deviance. She reaches into the darkest parts of the human psyche where sexuality, vulnerability, and violence commingle and simmer, taking readers through the confessions of a self-mutilating foot-fetishist peeper and the bedroom of a kiddie-porn collector. “The Daddy” begins with a married mother’s Craigslist posting—“Daughter seeks father”—and follows heady role playing on dates at Dairy Queen, until one night a drunken phone call shatters a hard-won escape from reality. A couple’s relationship collapses under the weight of their elaborately constructed prison-rape fantasy in “Jailbait.” In “The Fire,” Meijer cooks up a perfectly toxic romantic thrall between an arsonist and his creation, full of capriciousness and jealous rage. No behavior is off-limits: necrophilia, bestiality, patricide. “I wish I could explain this to you, what I’m doing, why I’m doing it,” the foot fetishist Robert says. But thankfully Meijer avoids pat psychologizing. Beneath these incendiary premises, the characters’ relationships engender genuine empathy; Meijer is extraordinarily adept at tapping into a well of existential loneliness brought on by civilization’s tendency toward exclusion and shame. (July)