The Longest Pregnancy
By Melissa Fraterrigo.
University of West Alabama Press, $14.95.

The titular story of this imaginative collection is about a woman who has been pregnant for six years. Another, called “Wife Swapping with a Giant,” is about exactly that: neighbors, one giant couple and one human couple, switching partners. And yet, there seem to be no hidden meanings or metaphorical symbols in this 14-story debut collection. Fraterrigo presents her worlds just as they appear to her: skewed, extraordinary and unbelievable, but always rooted in truth. Her narrative moxie speaks for itself, and yanks the reader into her world.

Most of the collection features female protagonists dealing with everyday sorrows on a slant. In “The Attached Couple,” Julia awakes on the first day of her honeymoon attached at the hip to her new husband, Kip, by a thick piece of skin. Kip is frantic, wanting to get away, but Julia relaxes into what she sees as married life. In “The Strongest Woman in the World,” a woman with superhuman strength tries to have a normal life and stumbles her way through a blind date. One of the most humorous and satisfying stories is “Nourishment,” which seems directly influenced by George Saunders’s satire of the incorporation of America. In it, a pedophile priest is attacked by a cheetah at a theme park called Hunted Trails, where people go to spend time with animals in their natural habitat.

Despite a few weak spots, these stories are entertaining slices of Fraterrigo’s idiosyncratic view and voice. Each asks readers for a leap of faith, or a suspension of disbelief, but rewards in turn. In “The Shark Swimmers,” Fraterrigo seems to thank her readers when she writes: “We admired the shark swimmers. Each of them could seize the fin of a great white with bare hands and the shark would pull them for a few moments before they had to let go.” Lovers of magical realism and any reader who wants to briefly escape our mundane reality should dive into this book.