The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg is a thick, 980-odd page collection of longish short stories which houses a cosmos of diverse characters and human situations. The short stories are compiled from Deborah Eisenberg’s previous four collections of stories: Transactions in a Foreign Currency; Under the 82nd Airborne; All Around Atlantis; and Twilight of the Superheroes.

Eisenberg’s stories encompass the spectrum of the human population and circumstances, from bewildered insecure women to young men lusting after young girls to children being melodramatic next to dying grandmothers. The stories are similar in that they are often written in the first person in a female voice, and the stories are just scenes from life, with no plot or resolution to the episode–simply a snapshot of life, with tight, clear observations translated into beautiful images.

In “The Custodian,” Isobel and Lynnie are two women who have left and returned to the town in which they grew up. In conversation, one mentions Ross and Claire, the couple they babysat for years ago. In flashbacks, the true story of the relationship between the girls and Ross is revealed in a quiet, eerie understatement, through observations and actions:

A car door slams, and Lynnie gets up to look out of the window – maybe Isobel is going somewhere and will want company.

But it is not Isobel. It is Ross. Lynnie watches ar Ross goes up Isobel’s front walk and knocks on the door. The sound of brass on brass echoes up to Lynnie’s room. Isobel’s car is in the driveway, but her mother’s and father’s are gone. Lynnie Watches as Isobel appears at the front door and lets Ross in, and then as dim shapes spread in Isobel’s room.

I was out on the street before I realized that I still couldn’t see. My vision was like a piece of loosely woven cloth that was pulling apart. In the street everything seemed to be moving off, and all the lights looked like huge haloed globes, bobbing and then dipping suddenly into the pocketed air.

I can’t ever quite wrap my head around it – that life is amazingly abundant, no matter what, and every moment of experience is so intense. But so little evidence of that exists outside the living body! Billions of intense, abundant human lives on this earth, Nana’s among them, vanishing. Leaving nothing more than inscrutable little piles of commemorative trash.

I could see that Bill was suffering from those thoughts too.

Eisenberg’s range of characters and the nuances of their actions, their thoughts and observations in their various life situations are brilliantly captured. Many of these stories reveal the despair and malaise, discontentment or a soon-to-be-destroyed happiness in life, which makes a fascinating, albeit a sometimes overwhelming or heavy read at times.

The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg is an absorbing, sometimes heavy, but always intriguing observation of human beings and circumstances, dissected with amazing detail and a beautifully understated manner.