Faces

The theme of ""faces'' runs like a current beneath the deceptively calm surface of Kennedy's (The Journal of Nicholas the American 10 disquieting tales. Outstanding is the chilling story ``River Baby.'' It shows Maxine, a deserted, harried mother driven to drown her small daughter, whose blurry face confronts her from the bath water. Drugged with horror, yet strangely distanced, Maxine becomes obsessed with memories of her own Mama. In ``The Window Jesus'' it rankles Velma, a middle-aged farm woman, that her neighbor has seen the Savior in her screen door, so Velma's husband fashions an optical glass that will do the trick. With ``Her Furry Face,'' Kennedy carries her gift for the comic grotesque even further. Vulnerable Douglas, who has trouble with women, falls disastrously in love with Annie, an astonishingly literate female orangutan in the primate training-lab where Douglas works. ``Belling Martha'' tips over into futurist fantasy with a bleak vision of cannibalism in America. Kennedy's language is disingenuously plain, to the point of sounding nonchalant, and her endings trail off, but the total effect is strong and stealthy. (August 19)