Old Romantics

Armstrong debuts with an impressive linked collection about a Dublin woman stumbling through bad relationships and dead-end jobs. The reader meets Margaret as a young woman in the opener, “Number One,” when she loses her virginity to a helplessly selfish man she meets at a sandwich shop. They date for a while despite his thoughtlessness, until a pregnancy scare leads to his admission that he doesn’t want children. In “The Dublin Marriage,” Margaret shares a flat with a friend of a friend, and finds herself fantasizing about marrying him. “Trouble” finds Margaret in her 30s and carrying on a complex relationship with Sergio, a married man going through a divorce, with whom she falls in love and becomes pregnant. In later stories like “My Mistake” and “Trouble Again,” Margaret balances motherhood with a writing career and Sergio’s fiery temperament. Though funny and heartbreaking, some of the early stories grow repetitive with their depictions of failed romances, but the collection picks up steam by the midpoint, as each increasingly rewarding entry advances the overarching narrative. Readers will be grateful to inhabit Margaret’s singular world. Agent: Marianne Gunn O’Connor, Marianne Gunn O’Connor Literary. (Apr.)