Reviewed by Michael VanCalbergh

A quick flip through Zsófia Bán's short story collection, Night School: A Reader for Grownups, can bring on some serious flashbacks, even for those of us who enjoyed the school part of school. Structuring a collection of short stories to resemble a textbook is a risky endeavor no matter how much you veer away in the details. Personally, as I read, I couldn't help but recall the ritual burning of one of my textbooks from a particularly traumatizing high school class at one semester's end. But, in many ways, Bán's book is asking us to recall these traumas and hatreds of textbooks while reimagining the space that a "reader for grownups" could take.

The first thing a reader notices is the way in which Bán has organized the book. Each story is organized under a topic, such as "Geography/History" or "Physical Education," and is accompanied with thumbnail images throughout the story itself. The topics often don't have a direct relationship to the story being told but they provide a whimsical take on the story that follows. For example, "What Is This Thing Called the Exchange Reaction?" has the section title of "Chemistry/Physical Education" because the characters are playing ping-pong and the whole story revolves around the attractions, or lack thereof, of the players.

The images littered throughout are really where Night School starts to settle into its conceit to become a powerful collection of stories. Bán weaves these images into the collection as metaphorical or comical additions to the texts that they accompany. In the beginning of the book, many of the images are hard to place in the context of the story or they seem to be non-sequiturs. In addition, there are many images throughout the book that are empty or blank. At times, this provides a comical take on the story, as if there is no image that could accompany a particular line or paragraph or character, but the meaning of these empty boxes falls flat.

It isn't until the end of the text, with stories like "On the Eve of No Return (archival recording)" and "The Miraculous Return of Laughter," that the images really make the reading of each story richer and more complex. In both of these stories, the mix of different cultural artifacts like found photos, memes, anime, and art make the stories about laughter coming back to a town or the secret voice recording of Laika the Russian space dog seem even more absurd and wondrous.

The stories themselves are really where Bán's collection shines the brightest, however. Each story in this book is an exploration of pure imagination. From the very first story, "Motherwhere," Bán's ingenuity shines through. Here, the inhabitants of a town are "in a tizzy. Motherwhere had vanished." While the town looks for Motherwhere, and eventually finds that she's left, the character is revealed to be the center of this town. Everyone considers her their mother. At times it seems like she may actually be so, and she imparts wisdom to them like, "Motherwhere had taught the village not to stick its hand into shit because, she said, and I quote, You'll have shit on your hands. This was a figure of speech, but Motherwhere was an absolute genius."

It's also hard to talk about Bán's stories without the humor that she weaves throughout. Much of the humor of these stories is situational, as in "Self Help (Or: The Power of Nohoo)." The main character in this story is a student of Mrs. Grant, a teacher who continues to educate her students on a variety of situations using their "Nohoo." Clearly a child's misunderstanding of "Know-how," the "Nohoo" shapes each conversation that Mrs. Grant has with her students, from educating them about what to do during a tsunami to how to handle a man who is trying to "impale you on a hot poker like wild game." Imagining a class full of students listening to these lessons can bring a smile to anyone's face. Eventually, Mrs. Grant doesn't return and the narrator says, "Later, something Mrs. Grant said in class occurred to me, that it is one thing to be able to pass the Nohoo on to others, and quite another to apply it yourself, and that this distinction would shape our lives." The turn towards using the comedy of "Nohoo" to address something profound or serious is also not uncommon in these stories.

Many of the stories in Night School also deal with the darker side of absurdity. In "A Film (24/1)," the narrator considers over and over what kind of dive she will do to impress her audience. As the story progresses, it becomes more and more absurd that she cannot decide what to do when she eventually decides to "Just take your spot and blow it. Get too flashy." But Bán isn't interested in just the silliness of a diver not being able to decide, and we find that at the end of the story, the narrator isn't on a diving board at all. She is somewhere far more dangerous.

While the collection often pokes fun or presents absurd situations, Bán is constantly exploring the relationships between women. Specifically, she is concerned with the love between women. The whole joke in "What Is This Thing Called the Exchange Reaction?" is that the women leave the egotistical and extremely mistaken men who cannot comprehend that the women they've played ping-pong with can be lesbians who are uninterested in their affections. "Night Zoo" is a powerful story of two women meeting clandestinely in a zoo, only to be caught by the authorities. The speaker describes how she reacts when seeing her lover merely "ten paces away" by stating, "A powerful quiver ran through my entire body and I felt unable to cover the remaining distance. Finally, once one of my legs seemed willing to execute the command to step . . . I started toward you." The pain comes when a hand grabs her and drags her away from her love.

Importantly, Bán explores how these relationships between women can be overlooked and understated, especially when looking back through history. There is a clear and constant thread throughout the book and it would be a disservice not mention how brilliantly Bán weaves sexuality into these stories. If you're not reading closely or only thinking of yourself, like the men playing ping-pong, you will look just as foolish. These stories are meant to be enjoyed, but they layer on complication and subtlety like great fiction often does.

These stories complete the "Reader for Grownups" promise that Night School makes in the title. If there ever were to be a reader like this for grownups, it would have to include the absurdity of day to day life and all the joy and pain involved in it.Bán doesn't step away from the realities of life, but approaches them with humor in ways that are often surprising, but always completely welcome.