The Town of Whispering Dolls

In Neville’s bracing collection (after In the House of Blue Lights), residents of an unnamed Midwestern rust belt town develop unsettling relationships with dolls. In “Here,” an older woman who’s seen her town ravaged by factory automation and deaths from opioid addiction, describes the appearance of “a plague of dolls,” humanlike and human-size figures who enter abandoned houses, filling the space of those who have left or died. In “Resurrection,” one of the strongest stories, elementary school students assigned to take care of egg babies build homes for them in boxes with families peopled by paper dolls and toys from fast food restaurants. Their playacting becomes eerily realistic when the students begin to worry about their egg children dying; one student opens a hospital for injured eggs and finds herself overwhelmed with patients—eggs, dolls, and the students themselves. While some of the metaphors are too heavy-handed, the second half of the collection benefits from a lighter touch. In “Copies,” a woman looks back on a job she held at a publishing company “before the technological revolution,” remembering the conversations she had with her women co-workers about sex, femininity, and the men who abused their power. Neville’s inventive tales successfully tackle very real issues. (Mar.)