Long Distance: Stories

Savaş (The Anthropologists) captures the complexities of desire and loss in this gorgeous collection. The moving title story evokes the freshness of a new love affair and the agony of distance, detailing how linguist Lea meets engineer Leo in California before Lea returns to Rome. When they reunite weeks later, their love is bruised by slight arguments and petty jealousy. “The Room,” set in Paris, offers another delicately nuanced depiction of an academic, in this case Leyla, who attempts to balance her need for solitude with her work as a tutor, not wanting to be “swept away from her life” by distractions. Savaş is an immensely talented writer, able to convey her characters’ circumstances through a sparse economy of words, as evidenced brilliantly in “Practicality,” a devastating portrait of a daughter cherishing memories of her deceased mother. In “Twirl,” the energetic and thought-provoking closer, an unnamed Turkish woman frenetically busies herself with online dating and befriends Zerrin, a single mother who’s recently separated from her partner and lives vicariously through the other’s escapades. With unsparing grace, Savaş tenderly illustrates the struggles of her characters as they seek fulfillment. There’s much to love in these brilliant stories. (June)