Incidents Involving Mirth

In this sometimes amusing but uneven collection, the stories relate brief instances of revelation and ever-present loneliness and alienation in the lives of lesbians searching for a community in a largely unsympathetic world. The paradoxical ``Angel Alice'' features a London teenager who advises her homosexual pal to ``cure'' himself and become ``normal and happy like everyone else,'' and then realizes that she too is gay. In ``Car Spray,'' about a romance between one self-described ``radical feminist'' and an Italian lawyer, Livia successfully blends sexual politics and entertaining quips. But ``Differently Motivated,'' wherein a student of the future engages in a battle of wits with her tutor, is marred by jargon (``the Ardashi have eight more points of articulation than we do and their ruminant diaphragm resonance is quite a poser to reproduce''). Other stories, like ``My Name Is Lucia'' and ``The Promised Land Recedes into a Grey Horizon,'' sink under the weight of sexist stereotypes (``women are so much more sensitive than men'') and cliches about lesbian sex. This is British Livia's American debut. (Dec.)