The men in Wilson’s stories are somewhat homogeneous: middle-aged, Jewish, usually English, often with health problems. They have wives or parents or children who don’t understand them or maybe don’t even notice them. They are not satisfied with their lives, and they are compelled to look elsewhere for fulfillment: to religion, to fantasy, to their pasts.

The collection kicks off lightly with “Sons of God,” about a man who is attempting a spiritual reawakening, triggered by a recent gall bladder operation, in spite of the skepticism of those around him. His plumber is a Christian missionary who is not very interested in engaging in theological debate. His wife doesn’t take him seriously; she’s content to make fun of him for his crush on Helen Hunt. His son is only interested in TV, wrestling and football. Our protagonist is forced to ignore the cynics around him and find confirmation of his faith where he can, whether it be in a wrestling match, the superstitions of athletes or the roar of a jetliner overhead.

From there, the stories get heavier, as in “Mini-Joe,” where a man confronts his past while contemplating his possible cardiological ailment, or in “Dead Ringers,” in which a man comes to terms with his mother’s impending death and the specter of his brother, who died in infancy; his new perspective is brought on by a clean bill of health after a cancer scare. In “Fat Twins” a man takes his teen-aged son on a trip to Jamaica in an ill-advised attempt to reconnect with the boy; rather than making him feel a new kinship with his young son, the holiday drives home his inexorable slide into middle age.

Beyond the individual health issues and personal epiphanies, Wilson addresses broader ideas as well, such as the religious fate of Jews in the age of assimilation and the immense, distorting weight of popular culture. In “Last Light,” an English Jew visits his terminally ill cousin in Dublin and ends up wandering the city in the footsteps of Joyce’s Leopold Bloom, pondering the potential extinction of Irish Jews. In “Mother with Child” a man shows his abrasive mother the sights around Jerusalem, trying simultaneously to deflect her self-centered bigotry and the biological-clock pressure from his younger, gentile girlfriend. “Fundamentals,” which wraps up the collection, is the only story in which the protagonist is not a man; she is, instead, a New York artist who becomes involved in an affair with a married man she meets in London. When he sweeps her away to Jerusalem for a holiday, she gradually becomes aware of the almost inconceivable proportions to which the male propensity for deception can grow.

The sameness of the stories could edge into the tedious - the collection’s title story is an amalgamation of many of the themes explored in the other stories, leaving the shorter pieces feeling sometimes like preparatory sketches - but Wilson writes with such ease and good humor that a reader is unlikely to feel an animosity toward his characters. His fumbling men are sad, occasionally bleak, but they always stop themselves short of self-pity. They are preoccupied with their individual concerns, but they translate their preoccupation into deeper reflection. The stories, therefore, are not merely studies of narcissistic bores, but rather tight little parables about death, guilt, family and God.