In the title story, three young adults "just graduated from college with meaningless degrees" find adulthood perplexing. Their solution? Spend weeks digging a labyrinth of tunnels beneath their town. As in the Ben Folds Five song, they've literally gone "underground," embarking on a project earth-bound and impossible.
The often lost and hapless characters of "Tunneling to the Center of the Earth" never take a backseat to the idiosyncratic set-pieces, nor are they bystanders in the elaborate plots or any grandiose voice. In the first story, a chilling yet poignant zinger called "Grand Stand-In," the narrator is a 56-year-old woman who works for a "Nuclear Family Supplemental Provider." She role-plays as a "grannie" for upwardly mobile couples who no longer have living parents but feel their children are missing out on a crucial life experience: having a grandmother. "And that's where I come in," she muses. Wilson's stories ask: What is family in the 21st century? Are teenagers wiser than their parents? Are we defined by our work? Interestingly, four of the 11 tales end with characters quitting their jobs or abandoning some pursuit to find change and the clarity to move on.
Wilson, a Tennessean who teaches at the University of the South, spins no verbal web. His straightforward, often first-person, narration gets the job done. The only flaw might be Wilson's tendency to rely on exposition. "Mortal Kombat," a stirring story about two Quiz Bowl nerds awkwardly drawn to each other, might have felt even more immediate had it included more dialogue or interior monologue to let the characters speak more for themselves.
