What's Important Is Feeling

Wilson's (Flatscreen) collection presents the listlessness and ennui associated with the post%E2%80%93baby boomer generation. A twist, though, is that the narrators are Jewish (all but one are male), which puts a particular slant on the slacker attitude. Taken as a whole, the book presents a picture of the coming-of-age angst of this generation, from adolescent lust to the loneliness and failure that waits in the shadow of adulthood. While the best stories resonate, others feel out of reach for readers who can't see themselves on the page. In one of the collection's standouts, "Things I Had," a man recalls, following the breakup of his marriage, growing up Jewish in Miami and attending a Catholic school with his sister as his grandfather faded into senility. At once ironic and wistful, "Some Nights We Tase Each Other" is about four college roommates living in a "classless household" where cocaine and books by Karl Marx also make appearances. And "We Close Our Eyes" details, from the viewpoint of a teenage boy, the state of a family as the mother's cancer returns. (Mar.)