Times Like These

The eight stories of Ingalls's latest collection feature elaborate plots and surprising, if sometimes inconclusive, resolutions. The highlight is the opener, "Last Act: the Madhouse," a delicious take on extravagant operatic tragedy. An opera-loving teenager falls for, and impregnates, a girl of whom his parents don't approve; the parents' sneaky, twisted response to the situation destroys the relationship. Years later, after discovering his parents' treachery, the young man goes mad; his ex-lover's fate is similarly unfortunate. In the sly, comic "Somewhere Else," a married couple, both travel agents, look forward to a free trip, only to discover that their journey has no end. "Veterans" tells how Sherman, a depressed alcoholic Korean War vet, inserts himself, with increasing menace, into the happy family life of the soldier who saved him, while "No Love Lost" is a dark, creepy tale of the brutalities of life after war. Rich narratives and characters who change over their course make many of the stories feel more like novellas, and Ingalls's command of her varied worlds—from bucolic small town to renegade postwar countryside—is impressive. (Oct.)