Love Stories

Previously published in Great Britain in 1990, this collection of 18 stories about love and its many guises represents an uneven gathering of authors, from Stella Whitelaw to Ivan Turgenev, Jilly Cooper to John Updike. But whether written by a literary heavyweight or a popular romance writer, the stories share a simplicity of narrative and rather dramatic tone. Typical of the more romantic tales are Catherine Cookson's ``Miss Geraldine Parkington,'' about a spinster from a well-to-do English family who proposes marriage to her longtime gardener, and Pilcher's ``Lalla,'' in which a plain girl relates how her beautiful older sister gave up a dashing fiance and modeling career to return to her childhood sweetheart. Updike's ``A Constellation of Events,'' a housewife's account of the beginning of an affair, stands out for its author's familiar ability to shade and alter narrative with a telling glance, or through tone of voice. Unfortunately, despite the presence of other major writers (Daphne du Maurier, Guy de Maupassant, H.E. Bates, Colette), such subtlety and craftsmanship are rare in this volume, which proves satisfying without being challenging, interesting without being memorable. (Feb.)