cover image Here: Stories

Here: Stories

Elizabeth Inness-Brown, Elizabeth Innes-Brown. Louisiana State University Press, $21.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-8071-1848-1

Perspectives often shift in this second collection (after Satin Palms) of 14 stories, many of which portray the lives people lead once their idealism is gone. The female narrators of ``Stephen'' and ``Really Love Him'' take contrasting views of brief affairs, but both are realists who long ago discovered what they can expect from life. ``Happy Father's Day'' depicts a middle-aged man's relationship with his dying father as a prelude to the one he forges years later with his own grown children. ``Addison,'' on the other hand, chronicles a life devoid of close ties yet filled with sexual encounters and self-delusions that fall away only after the death of an acquaintance. The collection's standout is ``Traveler,'' a truly scary tale in which the narrator pretends to be the woman she thinks she's been mistaken for, only to discover that the joke is on her; once she reaches that recognition, the tension--accompanied by intimations of violence--never lets up. Ranging from frightening to strange to poignant, Inness-Brown's work powerfully prompts us to examine where we've been and where we're going. (Mar.)