cover image In the Form of a Person: Stories

In the Form of a Person: Stories

Ann Pyne. Alfred A. Knopf, $21 (197pp) ISBN 978-0-394-57338-0

The dozen stories in this debut collection are told in arresting prose but have the quaint resonance of old-fashioned mantelpiece curios. Brittle, arch but oddly affecting narratives that offer disjointed insights about patrician lives, most are not so much stories as they are personality studies. Pyne has a unique style, however, that offers up such moments of brillance as this detail from ``On the Great Lawn at Groton,'' on a fight between schoolboys: ``The fast green ground whacks up into them, one time, two times, three times. . . . '' At other moments, though, her language is distractingly strange (in the same story: ``its smell-without-smelling smell of that place where handkerchiefs are relentlessly drawn from'') But when she is good she is strikingly perceptive. ``Switzerland'' is a clever tale about a repressed schoolteacher's experience on a maiden voyage, and it is also the most linear. Pyne has staked out the territory of privilege and money, from Southampton to Jupiter Island, and she knows her subjects very well. There is a genuineness to the inner ramblings of characters who worry about the servants and the wine and shooting etiquette. But a highly refined skill of literary manipulation combined with rich material isn't enough. The book falls flat because, despite its self-conscious complexity, it lacks any real force and focus. (Sept.)