Stories of an Imaginary Childhood

In this well-intentioned but overwritten effort, ultimately a pallid imitation of the works of Isaac Bashevis Singer, Bukiet ( Sandman's Dust ) conjures a Polish shtetl circa 1928. The narrator of 12 linked stories is a precocious Jewish boy who gets into myriad scrapes and who observes his elders with a wry amusement. He makes ``sounds like the slaughter of swine'' on his new violin but his proud parents think he's a virtuoso; when he trades his patchwork quilt for a young gypsy's bicycle, his family looks at him as if he were ``Esau caught trading his birthright for a bowl of pottage'' and the less-than-thrilled gypsies compel him to bicycle on a tightrope; he plays Cyrano as he scribbles love letters for a man whose obvious poverty never tarnishes his reputation as a millionaire (``We'll never have the money he hasn't got,'' says the narrator's father); he lusts after Rebecca, a Jewish whore who proudly recounts the story of Hanukkah for Polish scoffers, and helps to deliver her illegitimate baby. The collection has bite only when Bukiet humanizes Zalman the gravedigger, a dreamy philosopher, and when the narrator, hallucinating, believes himself to be Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor, and others who persecuted the Jews. (Apr.)