Whores for Gloria

William T. Vollmann. Penguin Books, $14 (160pp) ISBN 978-0-14-023157-1

Vollmann's brief, coy and ultimately unfulfilling novel portrays a Vietnam veteran in San Francisco's Tenderloin demimonde questing for an elusive, idealized woman named Gloria. (Feb.)

Featured Fiction Reviews

Victoria Redel

Redel’s sensuous latest (after Paradise) explores the fraught relationship between Dutch Golden Age painter Maria van Oosterwijck and Gerta Pieters, her servant turned Continue reading »

Dan Chaon

Psychic twins join a carnival sideshow to escape a madman in Chaon’s spectacular latest (after Sleepwalk). Born in 1901 Ohio, Eleanor and Bolt Lambkin can read each other’s Continue reading »

Samanta Schweblin

Argentine writer Schweblin mines readers’ deepest fears in her striking third story collection (after Seven Empty Houses). It opens with “Welcome to the Club,” about a wife and Continue reading »

Thomas McGuane

McGuane (Crow Fair) rounds up another memorable group of misguided and doomed characters in this stellar collection. In “Balloons,” a doctor receives a jarring request from the Continue reading »