WAKE UP THE NIGHT

Silver’s debut collection of quiet stories explores grim themes, including humankind’s propensity for violence and the inevitability of death.

Like many of the tales here, the opening story, “Outside Influence,” begins modestly and gradually turns somber. In it, an American photographer tries capturing the serenity of grazing deer before the animals shockingly turn on him. As the story progresses, more animals, and even beloved pets, become increasingly aggressive toward humans. In the more humorous title story, Ben Burton is born to parents who live in an age-restricted community. Unsurprisingly, some elderly residents object to the boy’s presence; one woman insists, “anyone who thinks I don’t like kids is dead wrong—just not in my backyard.” Perhaps the collection’s most uplifting tale is the novella Leak in the Roof, which offers selections from a celebrated fashion designer’s autobiographical manuscript. Kenny Silverman, before becoming fashion’s “enfant terrible” in the 1970s, expressed himself through poetry. The story recounts the long and difficult road he took to commercial success and how he fought for a healthier Earth along the way. Silver aptly couples sharp prose (“I was finally seeing life with a ‘what have you done for me lately?’ attitude, and not through a mind riddled with flashbacks”) with playful narrative formats throughout this collection; a few stories comprise scriptlike dialogue exchanges, and the book ends with scenes from the author’s Canada-set, Vietnam-era screenplay. There are intriguing thematic links among the tales, including examinations of American racism and environmentalism; certain character names, such as Ian, Bess, and Jonah, also recur, as do bits of Silver’s intermittent poetry (“The years whisper loneliness / Muffled by the day’s ordeals”), creating new connections.

Subdued, insightful tales of characters at dark points in their lives.