Following up on two earlier story collections (The Circles I Move In
and Very Much Like Desire
) and a novel (Radiant Hunger
), Lefer offers a sunshine noir's-worth of uneasy left coast tales. "At the Site Where Vision Is Most Perfect" documents what happens when a longtime Van Nuys resident is detained by immigration officials and becomes a victim of, and witness to, brutish acts of racism committed in the name of homeland security; that she is a Mexican woman named Clifford Pearlstein is just one of the ironic details Lefer uses to heighten the contradictions. A zoo worker's morbidly compelling description of transporting an antelope head drives "Alas, Falada!" while the narrator of "Angle and Grip," who is reeling from a miscarriage and from the death of her husband in a freak accident, signs on to a neighbor's plan to manufacture and sell "love dolls": "Apparently I said something about men being dolls, all manufactured in the same fucked up factory and damaged beyond repair." Lefer's staccato prose adds urgency to her suburban grotesques, giving a disquieting look at everyday lives that make little progress in transit. (Apr.)
