The Bed Moved

Young women mourn, date, and equivocate in Schiff’s lively debut story collection. Her narrators are in their teens and 20s, underemployed, and thwarted in their search for intimacy: “she forgot all the sex she had as soon as she had it, she didn’t really have it when she had it, and she hadn’t for a long time.” “Another Cake,” along with several other stories, deals with a father’s death, the narrator returning home to New Jersey to find her old books full of “promising girls... girls looking forward to the kind of loss that only hurts a little.” “Welcome Lilah” and “It Doesn’t Have to Be a Big Deal” take on a reluctance to commit to boyfriends who seem less than ideal. More experimental pieces include “Rate Me,” in which body parts are sent off to be rated and improved. “Communication Arts” documents, via increasingly frantic emails, the trials of an adjunct professor whose students range from confused to confrontational; the narrator of “World Trade Date” keeps seeing men who had worked in the World Trade Center on 9/11 and had “escaped, and claimed to be humbled.” Consistently and darkly funny, Schiff makes light of her characters’ dilemmas, but never belittles their genuine distress, resulting in a fresh, varied collection that will resonate with readers. (Apr.)