Dangerous Laughter: Thirteen Stories, by Steven Millhauser

“Steven Millhauser doesn’t traffic in emotional upheaval or interpersonal conflict. Most fiction writers try to make characters seem like real people, but Millhauser flattens them, giving his books the paradoxical effect of seeming realer than reality. For him, meticulous observation does the work of psychology. Millhauser is also our foremost animist: in his stories, mannequins walk out of department store windows and figures in paintings knock hats off innocent bystanders. His vehicles for these effects are the parable and the confession. There is a disquieting quiet to every Millhauser sentence that makes it immediately recognizable, a feeling that each was recorded for posterity by the last man living. The 13 terrific stories in “Dangerous Laughter” reintroduce us to this strange realm, last glimpsed five years ago in Millhauser’s previous collection, “The King in the Tree.” Read the review at the New York Times.