I'm about eight chapters into Bell Jar as of this afternoon and I thought, wait.  If I don't write down my thoughts about What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us, I might not be able to really do so with a clear head.  Already Esther Greenwood is settling herself into the back of my mind and coloring my view of almost every female protagonist I've ever read.  And Laura van den Berg's work deserves to be viewed outside that fogged vision.  So, here- my thoughts, mostly fog free.

I wanted to love this collection.  I expected to love it, which I think is what happens when I've read about other people loving it.  Especially when I've also read some of the stories in it elsewhere and loved those.  The title story was one of my favorite things from the Pushcart 2010 collection.  So I went into it with some high expectations.  It was a subtle kind of surprise to find that, for the most part, my expectations were rewarded.

I found myself returning to the cover image over and over, pausing in between stories to consider the long boardwalk stretching towards an unknown haze.  It felt like an ideal image, as the women these stories center around all seem to be moving in some kind haze, all of them reaching out towards something unidentifiable in front of them.  (Off topic question: How is cover art displayed on the Kindle? Or the iPad?)  And though van den Berg lets the reader spend some time next to each of her protagonists, straining to see into the mist ahead of us, she never quite throws either (the reader or her characters) head first into the water.  The book is rich in observation and small gestures.  There are whole stories that seem to live in silent places, and hesitate on the moments just before- Just before something (or someone) cracks, just before a character abandons herself, just before danger comes roaring inside.  I was quite taken with the reoccuring theme of monsters, of Bigfoot and the Loch Ness and a monster that is drawn in the sand by African villagers.  Yet, I found myself wishing that just once the danger would break through the window, or a monster would appear, just so I could let out the breath I was holding.

What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us is the first short story collection that I've read in a while that felt complete.  A round whole, with each story reflecting the others to form a coherent universe.  Even the seemingly inconsequential details came together, for me, so that when a wife touches her husband's back with affection in one story it would pull me back to the way another character observed another man touch "the gap between" the shoulder blades of his lover in another story.  It's a great debut and hints toward more great work to come.