The eleven stories in Puloma Ghosh’s debut collection Mouth are, in the main, about isolation, loneliness, and the longing for human connection. I know, it sounds like a laugh riot. But it’s not all sackcloth and misery. With an appreciation for the surreal, scary and weird, Ghosh embeds her themes into tales that play with familiar genre tropes such as vampires, werewolves, time travel, and ghosts.

The opening piece, “Desiccation,” is a creepy, dystopian piece about a friendless teenage ice skater who becomes attracted to a fellow skater, Pritha, who may or may not be a vampire. This coming-of-age tale of dead skaters and sexual awakening is told against the backdrop of a war that no one ever sees but kills off (we presume) all the men over seventeen.

In “Leaving Things,” a town is in lockdown, terrorised by wolves targeting female residents. When a vet breaks the rules and takes in a sick, pregnant wolf, she is astounded when the animal gives birth to a human child. Like “Desicattion,” this is a story about loneliness and desire that flirts with taboo.

“K” follows a college student haunted by the ghostly figure of a former resident named K. The protagonist’s obsessive search for information about K leads her to the college’s enigmatic and possibly dangerous groundskeeper, the last person to see K.

“Anomaly” changes things up a bit tonally, with Ghosh combining time wars, temporal anomalies, and online dating in a story that is both awkward and warm yet unsettling. I also loved the uncanny “Lemon Boy,” which is almost Lovecraftian in its treatment of holes and negative space.

The collection’s theme crescendos with the final piece, “Persimmons.” It tells the story of Uma, who lives in a distant world where a persimmon tree entices human colonists with promises of abundance and fertility but demands a gruesome sacrifice. The fecundity of Ghosh’s prose doesn’t mask Uma’s loneliness and estrangement, especially in relation to her mother.

There isn’t a story here I didn’t like. Each is a skewed reflection of our world, with lyrical language and a keen understanding of loss, isolation and desire. Apparently, Ghosh is working on a novel; I look forward to it.