Whether it is a bed and breakfast filled with loners and rejects, or a mild English teacher in Japan, disoriented by false accusations of sexual assault, the characters in Michael Hoffman’s short story collection, The Empty Cafe, are variations on a theme. Like a story told from many different angles, all tell of loss, of muted motives, of opportunities taken and lost, of the desire to connect and the inability to do so.

Hoffman, who was born in Canada and has lived in Japan since 1982, seems to have inherited his adopted country’s talent for painting the truth through the untold as much as through the told. Like a haiku, or a Buddhist water color, his stories tell just enough for the reader to understand the struggles underneath the surface. But interpretation is ultimately up to the reader, as the characters themselves doubt their own motives and question their own actions.

For example, “Jeremy Grafic’s Brother” centers on an academic who is estranged from his rock star brother. When the brother dies, he finds himself confronted with conflicting emotions, as he is at once relieved to no longer have to live in his brother’s shadow; guilty for feeling this way; and moved by the symbolic importance his brother held for his fans. As a way of reconciling these feelings, he agrees to talk to a begrieved fan, who has attempted suicide. Their conversation is a sort of dance, with their innocuous words about the everyday masking their individual griefs.

Like the Buddhist masters, Hoffman dips his brush into charcoal gray, drawing lines that may seem muddy -- as he questions motives, desires and possibilities -- while creating the suggestion of a picture, which comes to full fruition in the reader’s mind.

1stBooks; ISBN: 0759619867