WE ARE TAKING ONLY WHAT WE

Short-story collections are hit or miss for me. That said, I enjoyed “We Are Only Taking What We Need” more than expected, probably because the stories are thematically similar and the overall impression is novelistic. There are clear parallels with Jesmyn Ward's fiction, and the other book it reminded me of — and this is a far less obvious comparison — is Édouard Louis's “The End of Eddy.”