Berlin is a sad city, but it's a sadness you don't see. It's like having heavy metals slowly build up in your body. You can spend a few days, weeks, months, or even years here and never notice how heavy your heart has become.

A little boy who is afraid of telephones; a woman recounting to her lover her recent sexual assault; a man wondering what would happen if he woke up each morning nine minutes earlier than he had the morning before; a student who is plied by his German teacher with glass after glass of cheap wine . . .

The protagonists of Andris Kurpris's debut collection are at times melancholy and worrisome, and world-angry or absurdist at others. Kupris plays with tension, a building up to climaxes reminiscent of Henry James-but with endings that leave a lingering sense of having missed some important detail, some sinister clue that will reveal all meaning. Deceptively simple, nostalgic, and resigned, Kurpris's characters show how it can be just as hard to arrive somewhere (physical or intangible) as it can be to leave.