Open up

Welsh writer Morris (We Don’t Know What We’re Doing) puts a singular spin on familiar themes such as parental abandonment and the search for meaning in this staggering collection. In “Wales,” the crushing and sharply funny opener, superstitious 10-year-old Gareth attends a soccer match between Wales and Northern Ireland with his deadbeat dad, who left him and his mom three months earlier. Gareth clings to the belief that if Wales wins the game, he and his mom will never see the repo man again. The long and surprisingly moving “Aberkarid” centers on a family of male seahorses whose lovesick father promises them that their absent mother will one day return. The narrator, one of the sons, rejects their uncle Nol’s advice to live like he does, mating with as many “fillies” as possible and never giving a thought to the thousands of seahorses he’s birthed. Later stories explore young men’s passivity and resentments, as in “Little Wizard,” about a short fellow who’s convinced himself he’s a victim of “unconscious bias” at his low-paying office job. In “Passenger,” a Dubliner on vacation in Croatia with his Irish girlfriend defers to her and struggles with sharing about his impoverished background in the Welsh town of Caerphilly. The depressed narrator of “Birthday Teeth,” also from Caerphilly, identifies as a vampire and hopes to find happiness by having his teeth filed into fangs. No matter how abject the characters, their hope feels well earned thanks to Morris’s impressive ability to plumb their emotional depths. This is unforgettable. (Apr.)