The Sincere Cafe: Stories

In Becker's story ``Correspondence,'' a creative-writing instructor advises a student, ``What I learned... is that honesty, brutal honesty, is the best policy.'' In that spirit, the nine stories that make up this collection (winner of the 1995 Mid-List Press First Series Award for Short Fiction) are often pointless and at times lacking in substance. Not to say that they are not well written; the prose is genuine and unequivocal. The characters are finely drawn--all either lonely or suffering in quiet desperation, yearning to break free of the drudgery of everyday life. But with no narrative, the stories are little more than character studies. The most memorable are ``Wicked,'' in which a bereft woman is deceived by a former lover, and the charming ``The Excitement Begins,'' in which a rancher doesn't realize how empty his life has been until his 50th birthday. Other stories leave one with a sense of banality, especially ``Signs and Wonders,'' in which a recent widow wanders far afield to go to a garage sale, and ``Twilight on the El Camino,'' about the day a used-car salesman tells his first lies. There is little emotional involvement, and everyone seems ordinary and dull. Reading these stories is like the old cliche about eating Chinese food. As soon as you're finished you forgot that you've eaten. (Nov.)