It Will Come Back to You Author: Sigrid Nunez ISBN-13: 9780349020600Publisher: Virago Press Guideline Price: £20It’s a rare pleasure to finish reading a short story collection and vividly recall each entry, and one that It Will Come Back to You, Sigrid Nunez’s first collection of short fiction, affords. The trademark wit and empathy that won Nunez plaudits for works such as The Friend and The Vulnerables is present here and perhaps even more so than in her long-form fiction. Nunez runs the gamut of human emotion in this kaleidoscopic, boundless collection.Throughout these stories, the simple act of living becomes an uphill battle. In Imagination, the safety net of a family is more like a trap door. Elsie, a child with an overactive imagination, can’t wrap her head around the social cues her mother assures her she falls foul of, and when real danger threatens, fear of maternal chastisement outweighs it. Nunez presents childhood “not as a carefree, innocent time, but as a test of endurance”, and more often than not, shame – ever present – rooted in childhood sets off the action of these stories.Violence is also everywhere, as sudden injuries that cut careers short, ostensibly soft husbands who keep their “sharp tongue and violent rages” behind closed doors, or a frightening trip into the manosphere as in The Plan, which follows a disenfranchised young man plotting to murder his wife for no good reason; “she was a candidate”. Nunez’s penchant for subtly is gone here, replaced by an unsettling, domineering male perspective that brings to light a brutality left to bubble under the surface elsewhere.Anxieties abound. Nunez’s characters think about diseases they’ll inherit from relatives, worry about the threat of climate change and the “neurological catastrophe” that is our addiction to technology. Nunez writes with a pervasive doominess, but it’s never all-consuming. Humanity often finds a way in, through tragicomedy or slender moments of serenity stolen from the brink of misery, or a mother with a rapidly worsening neurological disease takes solace in a Brad Pitt impersonator. Elsewhere, a foundling robbed of any prospects from birth finds them in the face of her granddaughter. It Will Come Back to You is an unforgettable short fiction debut. These stories, steeped in realism but measured by hopefulness, are worthy equals to Nunez’s award-winning prose.Colm McKenna is a writer based in Paris, France