World Within the World

By Julia Gfrörer

WORLD WITHIN THE WORLD (Fantagraphics, 320 pp., $39.99) is both a collection of Gfrörer’s short works since 2010 and a sort of wide-ranging, loosely arranged survey of Western storytelling from cave paintings to the present day, including the NBC sitcom “Frasier.” Her taste in types of trauma and dismay is just as catholic — think of this book as the Norton Anthology of Violence.