Bella B.'s Fantasy & Other Stories

This intriguing collection of short stories, winner of the 1983 Prix Goncourt de la Nouvelle, explores the power of sexuality in the human imagination. Coolly, even clinically narrated, these are stories filled alternately with wonder and horror, with fear and release, in which the line between fact and fantasy invariably dissolves. The title story reads like a Freudian case history until Bella's psychosomatically induced boil spews forth spiders. ""Ella,'' the subject of the adventures of a visitor to Sao Paulo, is mysteriously transformed from transvestite to woman in two lusty encounters. The stunning heroine of ``A Story of Water'' discovers and controls the only source of water on a primitive Greek island through the sheer force of her beauty. These are fantastic, often ironic stories that challenge our perception of reality. (August)