Late in "Prayer for What They Said and What They Were Not Told," the longest story in Paul Maliszewski's collection "Prayer and Parable" (Fence Books, 229 pages, $15.95), a character referred to only as "man" thinks about himself and his friends: "They had mocked themselves, not because they deserved a good deflating but because they were afraid, more than anything else, of being criticized. They had begged -- begged -- not to be taken seriously. And so now what?"

All of the characters in "Prayer and Parable" -- the grown brothers dealing with their recently deceased father's robots in "Prayer for the Long Life of Certain Inanimate Objects"; the electrician who worked on a nightclub sound system in "Parable of Being Inside"; Claudius, Hamlet's brother-killing uncle, wandering a never-ending hallway in the afterlife in a "Prayer" with a 31-word title -- are in some way or another confronting that same question: Now what?

Of course, plenty of fiction deals with that question; what makes Maliszewski's stories so fascinating are the settings, the moments in which these characters find themselves confronting that question. A man at a theater is asked by his neighbor, "Why don't you put yourself in my shoes?" Maliszewski trades the cliché for fact: In "Parable of Another's Shoes," everyone in the theater moves one seat to the right, putting themselves in the shoes of their neighbor.

Even though there are fantastic elements in some of the stories, the moments under consideration and examination are moments it's easy to ignore, or to let pass unexamined: In "Prayer for the First Balance," it is the moment of scrubbing a floor after a plant has fallen and realizing that "doing something over is the real work of this life." Maliszewski has a phenomenal, almost mathematical eye, able to tease out even the smallest moment's fulcrum.

The book's title, "Prayer and Parable," is, like the rest of Maliszewski's writing, direct and literal: Each story in the book is either prayer or parable. Maliszewski's language is approachable, common as speech, yet he uses it to describe some of life's most inarticulate, wordless moments. In "Prayer for Some of What Was Lost," the story begins as a list: "One hundred fourteen ballpoint pens, ninety-seven pencils, thirty-five felt-tips, and at least six special pens, the expensive kind, gifts from behind locked counters." The man in the story ages, the scope of his losses widens and, just before the story's end, the reader is advised to "imagine losing the same thing every day for the rest of your life. Now imagine that there's nothing you can do about it." It's a brief, magic moment, in which the reader might suddenly see all the stuff of his or her own life differently.

These are welcoming, accessible stories: The lack of character names could be annoying, yet Maliszewski makes it work, makes each story feel open, as if the reader could step into it -- or as if the stories are describing the lives we each lead.

Weston Cutter, author of "You'd Be a Stranger, Too," and editor of the book review website Corduroy Books, is from St. Paul.