The easiest way to sum up Julie Booker’s debut collection of short stories lies not in the book itself, but in her bio: “She sees the world in pithy arcs, nicely contained.” Up Up Up is bursting with such arcs; tiny, beautifully constructed narratives that contain unselfconscious multitudes. The stories are diverse, original, and novel, presented to the reader in simple language that contradicts the gravity of the subject matter.

The first words of “Speculators” are powerful in their scarcity: “That summer we learn about rape. A Girl Guide from our unit goes into the valley one late afternoon and comes out different.” The theme of girlhood cruelty is also referenced in “Levitate,” a story that is a mere two pages long yet stands as one of the strongest in the collection. Booker shows us the first understandings of trust by artfully contrasting a children’s sleepover game with the sudden, monumental betrayal of a prank, laying bare our earliest inclinations to manipulate and hurt as a means of feeling whole.

Booker continues this inventiveness in “Texas,” capturing the loneliness and invisibility of an aging single woman via her parents’ one-bedroom trailer, a jigsaw puzzle, and the absurdity of an aquafit class. “Sacrifice” flourishes via foreign and familiar objects, while the title story explores the heady contradictions and hungers that lie between sexuality and motherhood. The collection’s twenty pieces overflow with all of life’s most vital themes, as Booker effortlessly documents seemingly inconsequential moments in ways that relay their most important lessons.

In the end, these stories are most concerned with the small conversations and moments that shift everything, that alter our perspective on the world and our feelings about ourselves and others. Up Up Up is a stunning, fresh debut collection from an author who is worth watching.