AUTOCORRECT

A bemusing clutch of comic vignettes alert to contemporary anxieties.

For veteran Israeli writer Keret, technology doesn’t simplify our lives so much as amplify our foibles. In “Point of No Return,” efforts to find a programmable romantic partner go sideways. So, too, does a system that can allegedly cure loneliness in “Soulo.” In “The Future Is Not What It Used To Be,” the invention of a time machine doesn’t impress the populace until it’s rebranded as a way to drop those extra pounds. The Borgesian “Director’s Cut” imagines a film about a person’s life that’s exactly as long as his life itself. Such concepts seem possible in Keret’s hands, even likely, and the two translators from the Hebrew emphasize a clear, deadpan delivery, describing calamity with a disarming cool: “The aliens’ spaceship arrived every Thursday”; “People, by the way, became extinct a short time later”; “The world is about to end and I’m eating olives.” Not all of the 33 stories land: In “A Hypothetical Question,” a couple bickers over whether eating the other’s corpse would be an act of devotion, and in “Squirrels,” a dead partner may or may not be reincarnated as a rodent. But Keret still has an impressive success rate, finding places where the out-there premises sharpen our fears of loss and loneliness. “A World Without Selfie Sticks” supposes what might happen if our universe lacked one small but essential thing (no, not selfie sticks); “Polar Bear” imagines an AI tool to replace our partners, but which comes undone with one potent question. In its strongest moments, what resonates most aren’t Keret’s high-concept predicaments, but the determination of characters to preserve their humanity despite them.

Wry, affectionate, tart storytelling with Keret’s trademark comic kick.