Black maps

This second collection of short stories by David Jauss opens with an epigram from Milan Kundera that sets the stage for many of the characters in Black Maps: "It takes so little ... for a person to cross the border beyond which everything loses meaning." Among those for whom all meaning is lost is the man in "Torque" who gives up his wife and a child for the sake of an odd quest to build a limousine. Or the son in "Glossolalia" whose father has suffered a nervous breakdown. The people here bear the weight of their troubles uneasily, but with a certain world-weary acceptance.