The Era of Not Quite

In his debut collection of stories, Watson offers allegories that plumb the contradictions of reading, writing, and human desire. Many of the 23 stories have the lilt of fairy tales gone awry, as in “When the World Broke,” about a contest for a story that can fix the world, or “The Purest Note That Had Ever Been Sung,” about a boy who braves a dragon for his beloved. In “The Messenger Who Did Not Become a Hero,” a man offers unwelcome wisdom to the people of a fantasy kingdom, and in the funny “What I Did on My Summer Vacation,” a teacher tells her class of the bloody vengeance she took on her cheating husband. Watson’s heightened, bleak reality often turns surreal, as in “My Foot Is On Fire” and “Wolves,” and the tendency persists into condensed thought experiments like “My Memoir” and “Pachyderms.” Watson’s characters, meanwhile, are shorn of personality and specificity, becoming the aimless desiring machines of “Against Specificity,” “Men,” and the title story. The many clever conceits, however, are undercut by self-indulgence. While indebted to the likes of Beckett and Saunders, the book can’t quite stand on its own. Agent: Anne Borchardt, the Georges Borchardt Literary Agency. (May)