A collection’s titular story is almost never the best piece in it. There could be any number of reasons to explain this tendency: authors are not always the best judges of their work, or certain story titles just sound best as phrases out of context.

David Whitton’s debut collection is the rare exception. The title story is a fun, non-linear bit of quirk that explores regret, anticipation, and the collapsing and intersecting of relationships, using the uncommonly well-executed narrative device of time-travel. Justin and Holly roam Paris after a one-night stand, trying to fix the mistakes that brought them to this point, while avoiding new ones. In doing so, they find themselves thrown minutes or hours backward in time at irregular intervals. Whitton gets everything right, making this story alone worth the book’s cover price.

The Reverse Cowgirl is loaded with characters struggling to deal with circumstances they can’t control, misunderstanding their roles in unfamiliar contexts, or failing to comprehend their limitations. “Twilight of the Gods,” which previously appeared in the 2010 anthology Darwin’s Bastards, edited by Zsuzsi Gartner, is a satire of asymmetric warfare and corporate expansion that takes place in the near future, but the story is ultimately about different kinds of love in a culture that views the emotion as weakness. “Where Did You Come From?” is about a woman’s refusal to acknowledge her obsession with a construction worker who wants to forge a new life for himself in the beauty industry. It’s the second best story in the book, tackling both the narrator’s emotional collapse and her expectations about gender without ever losing its sense of humour.

“Raspberries” is the collection’s only truly unsuccessful story. It’s a straightforward piece about an elderly woman named Rosemary being conned out of her money by a man claiming to represent her long-lost husband, who disappeared decades earlier and has been declared dead. Nothing about Rosemary’s voice suggests she is gullible or that her faculties have been reduced by age or loss, yet both the plot and emotional arc rely on her total obliviousness. Unsurprisingly, it strikes a false note.

For the most part, however, Whitton’s writing is crisp, and the stories in The Reverse Cowgirl are full of surprise and wonder.