Swallow Summer

The settings in Larissa Boehning’s acclaimed debut collection range from the German coast to Berlin, from Tel Aviv to Tucson, Arizona, but their protagonists are often the same kind of characters with the same kinds of concerns: young, unsatisfied, and drifting through life. And while the stories ostensibly revolve around minor events, the real focus is on relationships—burgeoning, failing, unreciprocated, or ended. Loss and lack of direction; transitoriness; fatalism—these are universal themes, and inSwallow Summer, Larissa Boehning has brought them sparklingly up to date.