cover image Dream Date: Stories

Dream Date: Stories

Jean McGarry. Johns Hopkins University Press, $19.95 (248pp) ISBN 978-0-8018-6937-2

Dream Date, Jean McGarry's sixth collection of stories, lays bare the insecurities, infidelities and inadequacies of its upper-middle-class characters. Men take the lead in the first section and women dominate the second, though McGarry is too sophisticated for a mere ""he said/she said"" dialectic. An arrogant classics scholar's dinner with his superiors and wife (on whom he's cheating) ends disastrously in ""Among the Philistines,"" while an arts administrator's affair with a violinist is derailed when she learns she has cancer in ""Body and Soul."" Although the tone of these mini-dramas is often rather arch, with characters uttering lines like ""The props of marriage are many, Arthur,"" they are insightful and meticulously crafted. (July)