When X Equals Marylou

When X Equals Marylou collects stories about photographers, balding men, ghost chasers, doppelgangers, bibliophiles and dystopian subversives, to name but a few. It’s a mix not only of characters, but of time, and of worlds—moving from Russia to Hungary to Canada, from small towns to big cities to the interior of dreams, from suburbia to welfare offices to interrogations to Alcoholics Anonymous to the Library of Alexandria.

This new collection, evocative of Jonathan Lethem and Paul Auster, i...