There may be better places to sound for depth, to mine for connections, to steep oneself in the near-eternal and give the ultracontemporary world the slip, than Edgewater, New Jersey. But from just outside my three rented rooms on Undercliff Avenue, through the rusty sideways diamonds of the staggering fence that runs along the walk and separates the occasional pedestrian from the oil tanks and cranes below, there is much to consider.

At the outset of Burma Sahib, the new novel by esteemed travel writer Paul Theroux, a woman and her husband aboard the ship Herefordshire take an interest in another passenger—a young man standing at the bow looking out to the sea. Who is he? Where is he going?

Louise Kennedy (author of an acclaimed novel, Trespasses) writes beautifully about the Irish and their tumultuous inner lives. In the story, “Hunter-Gatherers,” Siobhán’s fascination with a hare in her backyard turns sour when her lover Sid abruptly puts an end to the wild creature’s life. “In Silhouette” traces a line from the present-day Irish countryside to the Troubles of the 1980s.

On the tree-lined stretch of stately condos and apartment buildings, the structure that had technically been in my possession since 7:37 p.m. two weeks ago Tuesday—the determined hour and minute my father suffered his heart attack—announced itself like Dad invariably did when entering into any setting: loudly, with exuberance, and flashing money.

In several stories, Hadley plays fast and loose with point of view. This may be jarring at first, but readers soon understand there are further twists in perspective yet to come. In “Men,” the point of view flits from one character to another before settling on Michelle, who works in a high-end restaurant, and Jan, Michelle’s long-estranged younger sister, whose hair is “old-gold color, a silky cut, feathered onto her shoulders.”

In 1883, a child goes missing during a sandstorm in the barren landscape of southern Australia. This event sets in motion a range of actions and consequences in and around the small community of Fairly. The teeming cast includes (but isn’t limited to) Denny Wallace, the 6-year-old missing child; his mother, father, and five sisters; a priest undergoing a crisis of faith; two native trackers; a newlywed constable and his wife; and a Swedish exile painter and his wife.

Boyle's prose flits artfully around on the page, rich in imagery and colloquial phrasing, often delivered via first-person narrators as deeply flawed as any reader could hope for. Sometimes this makes for an awkward balance between comedy and tragedy, but in his best work, Boyle succeeds in nailing a particular vein of (usually) male rage. His latest story collection, I Walk Between the Raindrops, exemplifies the T.C. Boyle brand.

All the stories here are closely observed, showcasing the author’s exemplary skill at painting secondary characters with a simple literary flourish: “Myra was little, she was mere, rat-faced and meager, like a nameless cut in a butcher’s window in a demolition area.” Also, Mantel reliably locates the right sensory details to evoke a childhood disrupted by arcane family dynamics and the ambition to escape provincial life in the North of England.

In these beguiling stories, we are for the most part steadfastly situated in County Mayo, Ireland. As in Young Skins, this hugely talented writer immerses us in a remote part of the Emerald Isle, serving up (with great sympathy) characters who display his signature mix of humor and melancholy. Life is hard for County Mayo residents, eased only occasionally by flashes of love and warm feelings.

The adaptation translates this perfectly, instead of treating us to panels showing the things Vonnegut describes, the authors instead do what Vonnegut did and tell us a bit about the creation of the original work. Part of what makes the execution of this graphic novel so brilliant is that the authors do not pretend to write as Vonnegut, but narrate this portion as themselves, similarly to how Vonnegut narrates Billy Pilgrim’s story.