Last Notes and Other Stories, the second collection from Nanaimo-born Tamas Dobozy, is mesmerizing and powerful, with a subtlety that belies its significant strengths. While all of the 10 stories in the slim volume are surprising, there is nothing forced or contrived about them. Dobozy embraces a casual storytelling style that relies on interesting and well-developed characters being allowed to act out their own truths (rather than being guided to final-page epiphanies).

“Tales of the Hungarian Resistance” is a metatextual inquiry into the nature of storytelling and genre masquerading as equal parts memoir and historical fiction. The thematic and stylistic choices, however, are rooted in the characters – a grandfather telling stories to his grandson, but who is interrupted, and corrected, by the grandmother.

Similarly, the relationship between a husband and wife is at the heart of “Into the Ring,” where backyard boxing (with several nods to Fight Club) takes the place of marital therapy. Nothing unfolds as expected as the story moves from hilarious to heartbreaking (often on the same page), but none of the developments deviate from the characterization. The story also highlights a deadpan quality that Dobozy wields like a scalpel. “I weave out, surprised at how much boxing strategy she’s retained, though I can feel a certain amount of it coming back as well,” the narrator recounts. “It’s just that I’m sweating, and she’s not even breathing hard – not even with the pregnancy.”

Dobozy is at his best when writing about the experiences of immigration and exile (in several stories, including “Four Uncles” and “The Inert Landscapes of Gyorgy Ferenc”) and the pressures and forces of the artistic temperament (including the tortured composers of the title story and “The Man Who Came Out of the Corner of My Eye”). The line between familiar and alien, between vision and madness, is a permeable, shifting boundary, rich terrain for a writer of Dobozy’s considerable skills.

At a time when front-rank short fiction is characterized either by an overworked, familiar formalism with thematic safety or by an outré stylistic departures and enigmatic resolutions, Tamas Dobozy is a breath of fresh air.