WHEN ELSA SANG THE BLUES

Bogaty offers a collection of short stories dissecting love and relationships.

Though the author’s characters collide in passion, when they strive for deep connection or permanence, they never quite succeed. The unnamed narrator of “In Saint-Rémy And Auvers” loves her partner, Steven, but feels they are opposites emotionally: “He lives on the surface. He doesn’t understand.” Sometimes, there’s an insurmountable age gap. In “But Not For Me” and “Nicky and Cat: A Romance,” the male protagonists are twice as old as their female partners. In both cases, the younger women, inhabiting stages of life different from those of the older men, break off the connections. Throughout the book, characters overlap or reappear. Many are (mostly caddish) lawyers who work at the same law firm and pop up in each other’s stories (Bogaty holds a law degree). Melinda and Michael are characters who recur; “Still Life of Melinda With Wildflowers” captures this duo’s dynamic: passion mixed with a hatred that’s capable of spilling over into physical violence. The sequel, “Boiling Water,” sounds a hopeful note for their future, but after the earlier story, readers can only feel fragile optimism for their bond (“what do you do when you discover that despite being created by God to order for each other, you just can’t seem to get along?”). The author is also a photographer, and his most successful stories feel like snapshots of moments in time. His dialogue is mostly brief and understated, and his descriptions of people and places also use straightforward language. Bogaty has perfected the open-ended conclusion, which, like a photograph, leaves things open to interpretation. Rather than neatly tying up loose ends, these stories sometimes stop in the middle of a conversation, as in “Wanda” and “Nicky and Cat: A Romance,” or in “Abigail At Play,” in which a woman vengefully squeezes her boyfriend’s testicles during a theater performance. The collection invites readers to ponder the many factors that fuel a relationship, and how people seldom seem to choose partners that make sense for them.

Bittersweet and complicated tales of the heart.