Chimes: A Monologue by Tom Cole. The Song Cave, 128 pages. 2026.

Things have a tendency to escalate quickly in Tom Cole’s slim new novel Chimes . “Someone organized an orgy in my apartment while I was coming in and out of consciousness,” the unnamed narrator tells us, recounting a time before he got sober. The half-conscious group sex isn’t that unusual for him; rather, the odd thing is that a stranger shows up to the party with all of his belongings in a suitcase and, after the orgy’s over, moves in. The man stays for a while, doing meth and eating M&M’s. Eventually, the narrator kicks him out, only to spiral into shame: “I knew I loved him, wanted him back, we were meant to be together.”

The novel is composed of a dozen or so isolated, cyclical episodes like this—some memories, others fantasies, all somehow both devastating and hilarious—that crescendo, explode, and devolve into self-loathing.…