Black Maps (Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction)
This second collection of short stories by David Jauss opens with an epigram fromMilan Kunderathat sets the stage for many of the characters inBlack 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.