"In Quarters" is a Proustian ghost story, or maybe a memory, or a dream. Narrated by a man who may or may not exist, it follows him through a sprawling mansion where he cares for a sick child, though he has forgotten whether or not the boy is his, while stealing food from other's plates and having sex with a beautiful young woman. When he travels to a provincial city, the young woman reappears--or does she? Repeated brushes with shadowy men with umbrellas offer a hint of menace that forms the backbone of this strange tale.

"Story About Nothing" follows a man who cannot remember his birthday "or even the sign under which I was born" as he experiences transgenderism, a pornographic tape given to him by a mysterious stranger, and a Hemingway-esque series of bullfights under the hot Spanish sun. As Littell takes his narrator through a series of affairs, each more ephemeral then the last, it becomes clear that this is a story about the transience of sex, the way that desire evaporates in satiation and then reappears when two strangers share a long look over a strong drink. Anchored by striking images--a lime sorbet, children diving off of high rocks--Littell's tale becomes a trip through desire that is not soon forgotten.

Commanding in spite of their vagueness, beguilingly easy to read but full of depth and mystery, these novellas explore the in-between spaces: between thoughts, between bodies, between hungers and their satisfactions, between eyes and the things they look at.