Transparency: Stories

A largely unlovable cast of hard-nosed Chinese-Americans search for their rightful places in the 10 carefully wrought tales of Hwang's debut. "The Old Gentleman," which opens the collection, finds a Taiwanese émigré widower remarryinig for love, ironically scandalizing his divorced, thoroughly Americanized daughter. The complicated relations between two family branches of émigrés drives "A Visit to the Suns": young women home from college feel "blunted" by their parents' strictness, while the coddling of the boy cousin leads him to sloth and rudeness. "Garden City" follows the aging, fallen-out-of-love Chens, whose tragic loss of their young son from a brain tumor leaves them at the mercy of an unreliable tenant ("the Christian lady") in the throes of her own private misery. Several stories resonate with youthful pangs of heartache and rebellion: "Blue Hour" finds a group of mid-20s friends unsure how to behave among themselves on a New Year's Eve trek into New York City, while "Sonata for the Left Hand" delineates a young woman's disappointing love affair with an exciting, coldhearted fellow teacher at an upstate New York boarding school. More panorama than thematic set, Hwang's debut is brisk and direct. (Apr.)