Linked short story collections are among my favourites: it’s so satisfying to spot connections between characters and storylines. It took me embarrassingly long to work out that these dozen Dublin-set stories are linked, and that they are likely to be autofiction. The penny finally dropped when I realised that the protagonist of multiple stories in a row had been named Margaret, while the autobiographical nature was clinched for me when I read the acknowledgements. Armstrong highlights various slivers of Margaret’s experience in third- and first-person narratives that initially seem to skip around in time but eventually settle into chronological order as she becomes a wife and mother.

The first seven stories are hilarious and awful at once, depicting a string of her narcissistic boyfriends. (“Number One” makes it clear who these immature, selfish, sometimes mentally ill young men are looking out for.) The title story is probably the best, recalling an ill-fated trip to the USA she took with Walls, who vacillated between pettiness and largesse. The fact that she gets an infected wound from stepping on an American flag cocktail stick [toothpick] is a sly symbol of how the trip reveals what’s gone wrong between them. In the second half of the book, she has an affair with Sergio, an Italian émigré with an ill wife and two daughters. “Trouble” proceeds week by week through her first pregnancy via headings (along with “Those Weeks,” “Any Given Week,” etc.); “Trouble Again” chronicles the second, which is complicated by marital problems and her father’s cancer.

Margaret’s (lack of) vocation is another thread. When she’s a young woman, her father gets her a corporate catering job. The building is overstaffed and she’s clearly superfluous, but she still manages one coup in her time. In “My Mistake,” Sergio gets her a first post-maternity leave job with his company that involves navigating bewildering computer systems and writing reports on information she doesn’t understand. All along, she’s been composing pieces about her life and trying to get them published. These stories are wry and well observed, documenting a woman’s shifting preoccupations and search for meaningful connection. This is Maggie Armstrong’s debut and it’s a promise of great things to come.

With thanks to Biblioasis for the free e-copy for review.