Love, Dirt

The 16 stories in Johnson’s finely tuned debut probe his characters’ reactions to awkward and sometimes unsettling situations. The narrator of “The Knack” reflects on his time working for a PR firm in Las Vegas, when a coworker captivated people at launch parties with her ability to identify where they were from. The story takes an offbeat turn when the coworker tells the narrator, who is gay, about his own origins in intimate and surreal terms (“You’re from the high heels your mother had.... Your father’s cuff links, the way he never wore them.... The princess movies you loved as a child”). Johnson also explores burgeoning sexuality in the title entry, about a teenage boy’s family trip to Chile, where his first sexual encounter is interrupted by his parents. “In Case I Don’t Call” concerns a woman who weighs her brother’s request that she provide security for him during his sex work. In “The So-Called Jacob,” a man arrives at his son’s daycare for pickup and is given another boy who resembles his son. Instead of concluding on tragic or otherwise dramatic notes, Johnson’s tales fade out into memorable snapshots of ordinary life. These delightfully strange stories hold the reader’s attention. (Nov.)