Cities I’ve Never Lived In

The stories in Majka’s debut collection are linked in two ways: many feature the same first-person narrator, a youngish woman whose marriage has broken up, but even those that don’t have a common mood—a loneliness and yearning for something that will likely not occur. In the title story, the narrator travels from city to city going to soup kitchens—she’s not hungry for food, but for a connection, a way to be open to the people she meets there. It’s not a plan with a measurable success or failure—when it ends, she’s still looking for “an answer to the loneliness.” In “Four Hills,” she meets an appealing man, and when she sees that he’s married, she feels “the calm settling of disappointment as it joined the tide of all the other disappointments.” The stories that aren’t about this character seem to be told by her. These are set mainly in Maine, sometimes in Portland, and sometimes on islands; they feature people who are figuratively and literally getting cut off. In “Strangers,” an island loses its only grocery store; in “Saint Andrews Hotel,” a touching foray into a less realistic mode, the islanders lose their ability to reach the mainland. Though the stories seem to blend together, this seems a deliberate choice, and the result is a human and eloquent exploration of isolation. (Feb.)