Horse and Cart: Stories from the Country

In this slim volume, Stevens ( Fire & Water ) boldly sets about shaping and communicating the inchoate impulses of the unconscious, with sensitively drawn characters, and subtlety and economy of expression. ``The Dark-Eyed Boy'' enlarges a disturbing incident between a pregnant woman and a troubled boy into a complex, poignant exploration of vulnerability and victimization. In the title story, a woman who volunteers in a hospital finds herself inexplicably attuned to an indigent preacher traveling through her town. The unwilling bond persists until she is once again called to the hospital; with a chill inevitability, her patient is the old preacher. Less satisfying is the fairy-tale grotesquerie of ``My Hands'': under a toadstool in a garden seem to grow life forms that not only cannot be destroyed, but multiply. In ``The Other People,'' the narrator suffers from strange urges, including a wolfish hunger for a nearby infant. But Stevens's lucidity and grace outweigh the occasional overreaching. (Sept.)