“In spite of the ocean that now separated her from her parents, she felt closer to them,” wrote Jhumpa Lahiri in “Only Goodness”, a story in her collection Unaccustomed Earth, “but she also felt free, for the first time in her life, of her family’s weight.” That search for freedom also informs this debut collection of 10 stories, which uses Lahiri’s quote as its epigraph. Based on real events and interviews with diasporic south Asians, the author explains in the introduction how she also, at times, uses imagination to fill in the gaps.

Loneliness powerfully pervades the narratives, as many characters feel isolated, their dreams often conflicting with those their families harbour for them, and with stark reality: the choice facing several is whether to pursue their own passions and beliefs or to compromise.

There is Afra, who journeys from Sylhet to England after marrying a man she barely knows, pressured by emotional blackmail – her mother threatens to kill herself if Afra leaves her unhappy marriage. There is Vinu, in the evocative Within Four Walls, who struggles to cope with his son Kalpesh’s mental illness, growing to understand Kalpesh’s “sharp, painful stabs of anxiety”. There is Keerat, in Crushed, who drops out of university, filled with a rage she cannot communicate to her parents. Indeed, it’s an inability to communicate, along with a craving for conversation, that is most poignant throughout, in stories filled with silences.

If the emotional effects of migration thematically unite the stories, stylistically they are distinct, as the author tries out varying voices and viewpoints, reflecting the sense of dislocation from different perspectives, from young teens to the elderly. The most haunting story is “In the Cracks”, told in the second person, in which the narrator addresses her dead husband directly as “you” throughout.

Grief is insightfully tackled in a book filled with absent presences. This is a collection that peers into the cracks in lives, and imagery of breakage abounds; Reema’s boyfriend “managed to smash her heart in two as carelessly as if it were a dinner plate”.There are some memorable and moving stories here. Those in the present tense most compellingly capture a sense of urgency to tell tales, portraying the pains of the past and present, and the courage it takes to continue hoping, in spite of the obstacles, for a better life.

In Spite of Oceans is published by The History Press (£14.99). Click here to buy it for £11.99