Doors

The class-conscious citizens of Tobaccoton, Va., struggle with their all-too-human desires for personal and material self-improvement in this sensitive set of 10 linked stories whose lucid prose, Southern themes and religious motifs recall Flannery O'Connor. Hoffman (Virginia Reels; The Trumpet Unblown) presents his varied townspeople with similar dilemmas: should they defy, or accept, their town's rigid, unwritten social rules? In the stand-out title story, a wealthy, snobbish and lonely widow realizes she can reconnect to humanity by respecting the dignity of the uneducated handyman who comes to fix her furnace. ""Place"" explores a similar class conflict from the opposite direction, tracking a poor young woman's exhilaration, her ""double high of wine and acceptance,"" as she accompanies a moneyed new boyfriend. Hoffman's 15th book (his fourth of short stories) moves between male and female narrators, between first and third person, between exploring the dreams of teenagers and the settlements of the middle-aged. His succinct observations never turn sentimental or condescend; his confident storytelling allows readers the time and resources they need to get to know each serious character. The final story, ""Winter Wheat,"" graphs the disturbing inner world of Matthew, a plain-living Christian driven to murder by some combination of jealousy and faith; as Matthew explains, ""I do know myself to lack the open heartedness of others. What I'm best at is keep on keeping on."" Though he's justifying a killing, Matthew could be describing many of the inhabitants just trying to make it through Hoffman's sensitively rendered Southern landscape. (June)