“No matter that she had been dead two years now,” Kalotay writes. In the opening story, “Relativity,” a social worker who cares for dying Holocaust survivors remembers one woman’s story of being so starved she was not able to nurse her infant son.

“You’re heart-scalded,” one character tells another in Daphne Kalotay’s deeply felt collection, THE ARCHIVISTS: Stories (221 pp., TriQuarterly, paperback, $20), a condition she describes as “an anguished, active grief.” And it is active grief that pervades these stories: From inherited trauma to the loss of dear friends to the imminent loss of the self, grief in this book is not simply a temporary state, but an identity that drives the characters’ choices. Each of the 15 stories is swiftly paced and engaging, rich with detail, highlighting and celebrating nature as it borders on the unnatural. In “The Eaters,” cannibalistic humans-turned-ravenous-beasts descend en masse to consume a safe haven populated by survivors of societal collapse, who wonder whether these “animals” are their former friends or family members.Ĭlimate fiction does not owe readers hope, but through humor and humanity Hyde manages to present a harsh reality without descending into despair, offering a space for mourning and for reimagining life in a permanently changed world. In “Cougar,” residents at a Silicon Valley “sanctuary” for digital-addiction recovery will ultimately be given back their phones to face past mistakes. In that first story, “Mobilization,” families of travelers (“we were multitudes, we were millions”) pack their entire lives and families into R.V.s, seeking to run away from the world - until their vehicles eventually run out of gas. Each story confronts the climate crisis by way of characters who are attempting to either accept or flee from the consequences of human destruction.

The stories in Allegra Hyde’s new collection, THE LAST CATASTROPHE: Stories (272 pp., Vintage, paperback, $17), are like the convoy of motor homes that begin the book: a beautiful parade of conceits that are all distinct and self-contained, but driving in essentially the same direction.

1408 short story book review