El Nino

The 10 stories in this second collection ( The Book of Seeing with One's Own Eyes ) teem with ironic, loving observations of denizens of the Northwest coast. All but ``Life in the Great Northwest Somewhere'' (a series of overheard monologues) are rendered in the first person with the rhythms and parenthetical asides of speech. Doubiago's seeming lack of artifice intensifies the impact of an occasional perfect communication. In ``Navarro Bluff,'' the tenant of a house situated at the ocean's edge relates that the man who built it can no longer bear to dwell there now that his wife, paralyzed, is institutionalized: ``It was my first understanding of how painfully mocking beauty can be when you've lost someone you love. Perhaps this is why we as a species, with our innate sense of loss, are hellbent on destroying beauty.'' In ``El Nino del Salvador: A Love Story'' and ``No Man's Land'' Doubiago can seem a bleeding heart--a minor failing in a gifted writer. (Aug.)