Noted Emerson alumna, Laura van den Berg released in October her first collection of short stories, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us. Beautiful and sad, her stories span the globe, from Madagascar to Chicago to Inverness, in search of wonder, love, and acceptance. Her voice is clean, the prose unpretentious and clear. The modesty of her language allows her characters to come forward uncomplicated by the often forced anguish and studied eccentricity one finds in so many contemporary short stories. Van den Berg expertly avoids such pitfalls as sentimentality and preciousness, although the first story “Where We Must Be” toes a fine line with its Keatsian theme of youth and death.

At her best, she writes stories like “The Rain Season,” a careful study of a woman who has gone to the Congo as a missionary after the death of her husband. Okay, Ima drop the critic voice, because this story is just too good for it. Say what you will of the other stories in the collection – which are mostly excellent but some work better than others – with “Th Rain Season” Van den Berg hits her mark. This story is close to perfect, and to the final line I will give the highest praise I can think of: I wish I had written it. So good! The story unfolds in lyrical splendor, all heartbreak and yearning, wonderfully understated.

Other excellent stories include the lonely and evocative, “We Are Calling to Offer You a Fabulous Life,” and, of course, the final and titular story, in which a young woman traveling with her mother decides to become a long distance swimmer. The latter marks a departure from the theme of dysfunctional romantic relationships seen in many of the other stories, and at last presents to us two characters who not only want, and who don’t just react as do so many of her characters, but are themselves driven.

Laura van den Berg’s characters are hungry women, often abandoned, abandoning, or on the cusp of abandonment, usually in exotic settings or situations. I will say that after reading that she was from Florida, I was a little sorry not to see a story set in that location, because she works so much with heat and weirdness, and Florida seems perfect. All in all, I would say that if you enjoy short stories, wild places, mysterious creatures, or humanity’s struggle with belief, this would be an excellent book to add to your collection.

(I should mention that I was terrified that I would dislike this book. The title is apt and touching, given the nature of the titular story, but without having read the book, I worried that the stories within could be cloying, cute, pedantic, or some permutation thereof. I was delighted that this was not the case. I should also add that I am not an ideal reader for either contemporary or short fiction. Aesthetic preferences. But I found Van den Berg’s stories appealing, nonetheless, which should say something about her not unimpressive abilities. She has a tenderness for her characters that one does not often see.)

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