BEYOND ALL REASONABLE DOUBT, JESUS IS ALIVE!

Ten tales of alienation and yearning.

Though the stories in Lozada-Oliva’s dazzling collection are not explicitly linked, they are unmistakably of a piece, each a candid confessional rendered with Lynchian flair. Extraterrestrials may be invading, but the protagonist of “Pobrecito” is nevertheless determined to finish telling his distracted audience about the tragedy he witnessed en route to a quinceañera. “Heads” sees a teenager courageously square off against the enormous monster that’s been beheading neighborhood pets, only to quail at the notion of visiting her incarcerated father, while “Tails” is about a hospital worker who finds romance and a sense of self after her stepaunt curses her with a sentient, 3-foot-long tail. In the wistful, elegiac “Dream Man,” a government agent from the past falls in love with a doctor from the future whose prophetic dreams he’s been hired to monitor. “Pool House” is an exercise in experimental horror, a coming-of-age story that unfolds with the menacing surreality of a fever-fueled nightmare. Lozada-Oliva explores liminal spaces both literal and figurative in “Community Hole,” a novella hazily narrated by a disgraced musician who flees New York to hide from the world in a Boston punk house that she believes to be haunted. Intimate and unsettling, Lozada-Oliva’s writing examines the longing and loneliness inherent to the human condition while maintaining a wry sense of humor. Evocative prose at once conjures imagery, conveys emotion, and develops character: “When she finally arrived in New Jersey at four in the morning, two flimsy blue masks over her face, eyes darting all around with anxiety, we knew she couldn’t travel alone anymore.” The author’s rich, economical worldbuilding and character development give this slim volume more punch than most collections of similar size­.

Powerful short fiction that lingers.