‘There was a reckoning of some kind to come,’ one of Robin Black’s characters realises in this new collection, ‘there always seemed to be.’ The reckoning to come, the shifts of emotional retribution laying in wait – these are the building blocks of the finely-constructed stories in If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This, by this new US author.

Black’s storylines seem deceptively simple at first, but as each unfolds, it reveals her meticulous attention to plotting. The stories are complex, richly-detailed and never predictable, and her characters instantly understandable and familiar. They try and fail to keep secrets from each other, but the insights they gain from hiding are often unwelcome and uncomfortable. In ‘Divorced, Beheaded, Survived’, an unexpected death recalls another long-ago death of the narrator’s brother, and the realisation that she can only helplessly watch her grieving, numbed son go through the same pain she had herself years before, remembering things ‘that make only an intuitive kind of sense. Silences, agreed to. Intimacies, put away.’

Black’s resolutions are as delicate and knotty as real life, stopping characters in their tracks with unexpected turns. The reader is surprised too, as she refuses to let these stories end in comfortable or conventional places, often revealing another, more masterfully-realised ace up her sleeve. Occasionally we are left with a metaphor alone – a bundle of ‘kindling and roots’ on a porch, which will soon unfurl as rose bushes, a single chair left at a soccer match, a tapestry of flowers taking the place of an urn of ashes – with which to unpick the real underpinnings of the story’s meaning. Most unerringly of all is the author’s compassion for her characters which makes them so memorable, and these scenarios so vividly real. In ‘A Country Where You Once Lived’, two estranged parents united in grief share this: ‘“I’m so sorry, Jeremy,” Cathleen says, a hand on his arm. “Me too.” Small words to cover a lifetime of all they might be sorry for, symmetrical, like wedding vows, like confessions. I do. I do. I did. I did.’ The moments that reveal Black’s characters seem almost throwaway in their simplicity, but resonate all the more strongly for it. An assured, subtle and satisfying collection.