The marketing for Quinn Dalton’s first collection of stories will almost doubtlessly focus on a few things: her eleven women protagonists, the diversity of voices, some assurance that Bulletproof Girl is not your kid sister’s chick lit. Fine, and all true enough. But tagging this book by its saleable points is a disservice to the complexity of many of these stories.

In stories ranging from the violence of an unrepentant and homicidal rage queen to the title story’s brutal family outing of a hardened and sober young woman with her mother and grandmother, Dalton stays away from complicated narrative structures, the surreal and magical real, and self-conscious narrative voices. More than any device or style, however deftly employed, Dalton’s characters keep us reading.

In perhaps the collection’s most moving story, “Back on Earth,” a woman dealing with the aftermath of being raped in her apartment becomes fascinated with the story of a group of astronauts as they orbit Earth and then return to the planet. She is rapt as the astronauts tell CNN that they jettison the ship’s waste in the Earth’s atmosphere, where it burns up, never to be seen again. She understands one astronaut in particular, Dell, as he says, “I’ve been gone so long I’ll have to figure out who I am again.” When he is in the last interview she sees, she notes how he “has the patience of someone whose dreams have come true, who has gotten to the other side and found it the same.” The astronaut and the narrator have much in common, removal and distance from the world, a perspective hard-earned and not necessarily desired, and a gut-level renewed purpose.

In “Dinner at Josette’s,” a woman attends a dinner party at her good friend Josette’s house, ostensibly to celebrate a break-up, except when she arrives, the man, Malcolm, is still there. Between the invitation and the actual dinner, things had begun to patch up. The conflict is that Malcolm is at least bisexual, and more than likely gay, and while everyone else notices, Josette, in love, persists in her denial. Josette and Malcolm are outrageous, hurting one another while drinking their way through elaborate parties and outings, and the narrator ultimately realizes that Josette’s behavior is all about trade-offs. The narrator recalls that her own decision to marry was received by Josette with a flash of anger and, later, her having noisy sex during a party she hosted, such that even Malcolm knew what was happening. “The sex,” the narrator realizes, “had been a message to me that I could never have anything without something being taken away.” Josette sees something in Malcolm more powerful than her need to stability or the typical hallmarks of relationships.

If the women of Bulletproof Girl share a trait, it is just that: a desire for or discovery of something more than is typical. In “Midnight Bowling,” Tess wants more than the life she sees before her with her fundamentalist mother and slightly perv-y and overzealous boyfriend, Jake; her own brooding boyfriend, Donny; her job keeping the books at the bowling alley; and the ghost of her dead father. In “Lennie Remembers the Angels,” a woman alone and in pain finally gives in to what she has viewed as the furtive actions of her neighbor, and realizes that his care for her, unexpected and without need for her response, is a form of grace.

The stunners in the collection, mostly those noted above, are among the finest stories I’ve ever read. That said, the collection has some uneven spots, most notably the somewhat preposterous “Graceland,” wherein the wife of a downsized business man hunts down and murders the former boss. The story is not preposterous because such things never happen; rather, the mode of telling does little to account for the behavior of any of the characters. Another weaker spot in the collection is the final story, “How To Clean Your Apartment.” It’s often very funny. When going through clothes, the narrator notes, “The shirt doesn’t fit your image anymore. It says cute; these days you’re hip.” As well, it makes novel use of a reference index as the frame holding the story. Ultimately, though, it feels redundant at the end of a collection of stronger stories about people moving past conflict and disappointment, and its core is not as moving, to me, as that of stories like “Lennie Remembers the Angels,” “Midnight Bowling,” or “Back on Earth.” That said, perhaps the last story was included to lighten the end, to leave on a positive note, or something like that. In other contexts, the story might not have given me problems.

Near the end of “Bulletproof Girl,” the main character’s mother, by then angry and at her wit’s end, delivers a speech to her daughter and her own mother. In it, she says, “Let me tell you something I know. This society makes women beggars. You have to be beautiful and independent and weak and smart and innocent and great in bed. You have to be motherly and childlike and fuckable.” Divorced from context here, it reads too much like a common manifesto. In the story, it comes off as spontaneous and a brilliant moment for the character. But I quote it here as an indicator of what the women of Bulletproof Girl so often find themselves up against, and the kind of ideas on which Quinn Dalton has built, in response, a moving and masterful collection of stories.