“Calamity and Other Stories,” the debut collection of short stories by Boston University writing and literature professor Daphne Kalotay, is about relationships and connections. Whether they are the deep-rooted friendships we make in childhood and maintain throughout adulthood; the day-to-day contacts we experience with the manager at the Laundromat or the cashier at the corner store; the relationships that may have only lasted the length of a short summer season, but remain etched in our minds because of their impact; the momentous ones that lead us to love; or the fleeting, happenstance connections that we may make with the woman seated next to us on an airplane, these associations make us who we are.

     Some of us, however, may consider that this coming and going of people in our lives is ruled by an unremarkable randomness. Yet, as Kalotay portrays in her precise and emotive stories, our interconnectedness is significant and purposeful and illuminating.

     Kalotay’s collection of 12 stories begins with “Serenade,” which is part married-with-two-kids-and-bored-stiff-by-suburbia tale and part I’m-not-who-I-thought-I’d-be rumination. It’s narrated by Rhea, who was 10 years old at the time and was taking piano lessons from Cole Curtin. Curtin, defeated in his own imagination, a “perfectly cultured” artist in the opinion of Rhea’s unfulfilled mother and an “embarrassment” according to Rhea’s businessman father, unsettles the household with his inappropriate language and adoration of Rhea’s mother. Rhea, looking back at this childhood memory, is a wise and astute observer and she saw Curtin as the tragic figure that he was: “[His] eyes suggested a long, difficult past. His mumbled comments implied a history of lost opportunity and poor decisions: Women gone off with other men. Jobs lost unaccountably. Sheet music lent to students and never seen again. … [T]here was a neediness in the way he lingered by the kitchen door as I urged him into the family room.”

     “A Brand New You” — one of the collection’s many standouts — has the likeable Annie as its central character. She has recently turned 40, which amazes her for she’s “thinner and happier than she had been when she was 30, stronger and more confident than when she was 25.” Her clothing hugs her body “lovingly.” She’s studying for her Ph.D. And, right now, she’s listening to her ex-husband, Ben, sing in her shower after having just “bedded” him.

     Rediscovering the man that Annie once believed she’d spend the rest of her life with — recalling his body and the “way the parts of him worked” — wasn’t an altogether satisfying bit of “sexual tussling.” Yet Annie detected a change in Ben, now 53, since the last time they were together nine years ago. He’d always required adulation from women and was flummoxed if they weren’t roused by his “fawning remarks,” but today his gaze seemed deeper. It was “[f]ear and loss,” Annie discovered, “because Ben too knew, finally … what it meant to walk into a room and not even be noticed. He who had always turned heads.”

     Despite their failed marriage and the passage of time, which had bettered Annie and aged Ben, their coming-together returned them to a place of familiarity where each accepted the other, a place where their attraction to one another lingered on.

     In “The Man from Allston Electric,” 28-year-old Rhea spends the afternoon with Lonny, the electrician who has come to her Commonwealth Avenue apartment to fix her wiring. Alone since her breakup with Gregory, Rhea passes her days in solitude; she’s productive and focused, yet there is a recognized sadness to her. Lonny is kind and measured. He’s engaged, but exhibits no real passion about his future. Though acquiescent, he gives the impression that he’d be happier if he didn’t have to prove himself to others so often.

     Rhea types at her computer while Lonny works in the other room. “She could just barely hear him,” Kalotay writes. “It was pleasant, the din of human labor. Now she remembered what it had felt like: the comfort of silent, easy company, having someone nearby, with her in a way that was other than social, the two of them toiling away with care and concern.”

     For an afternoon, Rhea and Lonny found solace in each other. Rhea’s loneliness was lessened and Lonny’s worth was sanctioned. But their contact also intensified their discontent, and upon parting, the weight of their disenchanting life-situations rested heavily. Kalotay does a remarkable job getting us to care about Rhea and Lonny, so that we continue to wonder about them long after the story ends. “The Man from Allston Electric” is one of the most melancholic, poignant and splendid stories in “Calamity.”

     In the collection’s title piece, “Calamity,” Rhea makes another appearance. Here, she’s 30 and traveling on an airplane bound for Massachusetts to attend her best friend’s wedding. Rhea’s the maid of honor. It’s a decision she regrets for numerous reasons; Kalotay works in the details of Rhea’s drama with a controlled pace that compliments the story’s mounting tension. “Calamity” is a memorable story of grief, empathy and the tribulations of love.

     Like Rhea, several other characters resurface at various points throughout “Calamity.” We see them at different stages in their lives. We see them navigate their way through the ordinary “situations that people find themselves in on any [given] day.” The collection’s 12 tales complement each other, but each of them possesses its own insightful wisdom. Kalotay’s straightforward “musings” on friendship, loss, family, longing, disappointment and love are rendered with grace. She makes it easy for us to identify with the connections and relationships that she has created because they feel genuine and are palpable. In “Calamity and Other Stories,” we can find all of the elements that constitute the human condition.

Amy O'Loughlin is a native of Clinton. She can be reached at amyol@aol.com