Nell Freudenberger’s debut collection of short stories lingers in the imagination, reverberating long after the final page has been turned. “Lucky Girls” primarily centers on American girls living in exotic locales while they simultaneously deal with their emotionally blunted families. The quiet, understated tone of the writing lends the book a subtle yet strangely powerful emotional affect.

The first two stories, “Lucky Girls” and “The Orphan,” are the strongest of the collection. Both stories concern ambling, directionless young women who can’t step outside of their own experiences to empathize with others. These are characters that don’t relate to each other, or to the countries in which they are living. Their emotions are consistently muted and reactionary. The narrator of the title story is unable to empathize with the wife of her Indian lover, and she can’t seem to grasp the rationale behind the fact that she never met his children or other members of his family. This narrator, like all of Freudenberger’s ‘lucky girls’ who live posh lives of ennui abroad, isn’t about to have a noisy breakdown or messy emotions. Rather, she floats above the action, passively letting experiences come to her, barely questioning her own role or motivation, content to drift from country to country, hungry for an ephemeral something that even she can’t seem to define. “The Orphan” concerns a rapidly deteriorating family visiting their daughter in Bangkok. The parents have been keeping their impending divorce a secret from their children, their daughter is dating a shady, possibly abusive local man, and their son, while not a fully realized character, appears to be a shallow college student with earnest intentions. These four barely relate to each other, capable of cursory conversation and only half-measures of care. The writing in this story is sharp, and the mother’s claustrophobic experience of the city is well described and keenly felt.

With the exception of the final story, all of these pieces utilize a similar structure. They are well crafted and break into neat smaller sections within the whole. Freudenberger has expertly divided the stories into these sections, building to a point of suspense in the present action before cutting back into the past. Yet at a certain point, after reading a couple of the stories, it starts to feel a bit too neat, too tidy, too crafted. There is no lack of control in the characters or the narrative, a function that perhaps underlines Freudenberger’s stylistic objective, but it is a conceit that soon becomes slightly predictable.

“Outside the Eastern Gate” and “The Tutor” are strong but slighter efforts. These stories are written with Freudenberger’s trademark strong, controlled grace. However, the characters could be made more compelling and their lives more complicated. Their lack of attachment and sense of moving about as ghosts in the foreign world leaves them suspended on thin strings above the people and cultures they come in contact with, making it hard for the reader to connect with them in any meaningful way. Also, the first two stories of the collection detail similar types of characters in similar kinds of foreign situations, but with more impact and greater acuity. The final story, “Letter from the Last Bastion,” is not nearly as tidy and controlled as the others. There is something to be said for Freudenberger taking a risk in the epistolary form, as well as having a main female character with a voice that is distinct from the girls of the prior stories, girls whose voices and experiences started to blur into each other. After reading a collection in which each story is strongly united in form and subject, this final effort breathes fresh life into the book. However, despite taking this worthy risk of trying something new, it is clear that Freudenberger is more familiar with the lucky girls living abroad than she is with the narrator of “Letter from the Last Bastion.” This story ultimately doesn’t pack the emotional punch that a final story should, and the characters don’t feel as authentic as some of the earlier ones.

Freudenberger clearly knows the craft of writing short stories. She deftly weaves narrative, dialogue, and insightful description into an enchanting mix. The stories have resonance beyond their pages, the wispy characters lingering like ghosts, the foreign settings sharp and interesting. These “lucky girls” who are wealthy, educated, and cultured become memorable because, even with the world open to them, and despite the kind of opportunities that most people can never know, they are without a place to call home. And it is this lack of home, whether in a familial sense or a physical one, that makes these girls compelling, leaving them adrift ultimately more lost than lucky.