In her introduction to The Path of Totality, a selection of new and previously published stories from her 35-year oeuvre, Audrey Thomas confesses that “Almost every story in this collection has something to do with language…. I seem to be obsessed by it, can’t remember when I wasn’t.” This obsession with language, for combining appropriate words to create a kind of music in prose, provides the collection’s brightest moments.

It’s incumbent upon an artist, however, to dig for a wider vision. The protagonist in most of the stories here is a self-conscious woman somehow engaged with the arts, living in isolation or abroad in a form of self-imposed exile. Most indulge in some form of verbal wordplay and/or exhibit a fondness for etymology. Given Thomas’s introduction, it’s hard not to read these characters as stand-ins for the author.

This is not a criticism in itself – almost any writer’s persona can be shooed out from behind the curtain of fiction with a little effort – but too many of the prototypical Thomas characteristics begin to feel like uncontrollable tics that do nothing to serve the stories’ artistic goals. The persistent word games, besides casting a pall of sameness over the protagonists, too often read like a klunky technique for literalizing a story’s implicit themes. When you factor in the tendency of her characters to retreat from conflict and intimacy into internal monologuing, Thomas’s stories often read like interesting excerpts from a missing novel. They are interesting as fragments, but lack a defining symbol, series of insights, or plot arc to harden them into a complete or closed vision.

There are notable exceptions. “The Albatross” benefits from the perspective of a male narrator and strong secondary characters, while “The Man with the Clam Eyes” captures the mystery and incantory feel of a Celtic ballad.