JOYFUL, SORROWFUL, AND ORDINARY MYSTERIES

Ordinary people struggle to find greater meaning in Fortunato’s debut short-fiction collection.

In “The Zone of the Train,” a middle-aged would-be writer decides he needs to follow his hero Ernest Hemingway’s advice and “get into the zone of the bull.” His solution? Playing a game of chicken with an oncoming train. A retired millionaire in “Ending in Death” comes back from a trip to Europe convinced that one of the tourists in his party was murdered. But is this would-be detective merely bored? In “The Great Piano Rebellion,” a Tony Award–winning composer, desperate for his next hit, begins imagining that his piano’s keys are talking about him behind his back; at least, he hopes he’s imagining it. In 11 stories, Fortunato explores the elusive nature of art, faith, and death, from a grieving father tempting God’s wrath in an Israeli synagogue (“The Torah Scrolls”), to a couple melting down in airport traffic (“A Walk in the Park”), to a woman suspected of murder writing up a confession of sorts to be stored unread in a time capsule (“My Testimony”). The title story revolves around a temp at a sketchy financial institution who takes it upon himself to save the job of his attractive co-worker. He has no romantic intentions toward her and can’t fully explain why he feels the urge to help her: “I had personally come up with an extension to the Joyful and Sorrowful mysteries,” he says, alluding to some of the Catholic mysteries of the rosary. “I called them the ‘Ordinary Mysteries.’ ” For him, these mysteries include women, love, and the question “Why?” Indeed, “Why?” is the one mystery that most often plagues the characters in this book.

Over the course of this work, Fortunato’s prose has a conversational bounciness, and his narrators, regardless of their circumstances, tell their stories with a notable sense of relish. “The interrogation was much less dramatic than the police shows I sometimes watch because there was no background music playing,” writes the suspected killer in “My Testimony,” for example. “No, the drama was being created by what we were discussing, death, probably murder. Now that I have your attention….” The premises are all strong, and some of the stories feel almost classical in their simplicity. However, the author rarely makes the most of these setups, largely because he fails to access the basic emotions and behaviors on which they’re built. The story of the grieving father doesn’t manage to sell the father’s grief, but rather devolves into an unconvincing competition between two friends with different beliefs regarding the existence of God. Similarly, the tale of the couple in traffic leads to a very low-stakes traffic arrest and a bout of cathartic profanity that would be at home in a cheesy romantic comedy. The author clearly knows how to get readers’ attention; the problem, time and again, is that he doesn’t manage to keep it beyond the first few pages.

A combustive set of stories that flare and then fizzle.