Alligator

Ryan (Animals in Motion) explores the boundary between dreams and reality in this approachable and surprisingly moving collection. In the title entry, the unnamed narrator’s life flashes before his eyes. He remembers a cartoon alligator on the shirt his estranged son wore as a toddler years earlier, on which a smear of red jelly looked to him like blood. Then, in a daze, he falls down the stairs and lies at the bottom, remembering other alligators, such as a real-life one who watched him from across the water on a bayou, causing him to muse on their connection (“Maybe the alligator saw itself on a lawn someday crawling up to a front door, shot through time. And maybe this is how we might believe in God”). In “Apiary,” new parents Julia and Doug visit Julia’s family at their home in rural Michigan, where bees have taken over the barn. The couple decide to leave early, and in a surreal turn, the barn collapses as they drive away. “Sleepwalker” centers on a young boy who follows his sleepwalking mother each night on the streets of their Indiana town. One night, he realizes she’s leading him to the place where his father died in a car accident. Throughout, Ryan’s offhand style gives way to startling epiphanies. This one leaves a mark. (Nov.)