An Arrow in Flight

“Life itself has very little plot,” says one of the narrators of these magnificent short stories by Lavin (Tales of Bective Bridge), who died in 1996. Rather than run a conventional course toward epiphany or redemption, each entry ends abruptly or ambiguously. In “A Cup of Tea,” a stubborn college student and her equally stubborn mother clash during a visit home. The story culminates in an all-too-realistic moment of folly as the daughter comes close to understanding her mother but instead lurches into an over-intellectualization of the issue at hand. In “A Memory,” a retired professor collapses in a fit of delirium after refusing to commit romantically to a former colleague he has been stringing along. A young man and an aging widow begin to fall in love in “The Cuckoo Spit” but go their separate ways after only a few days of courtship, unable to surmount their own ageism and anxieties about propriety. Many of the well-crafted tales feel ahead of their time. This acute and uncompromising collection is a gift. Agent: Grainne Fox, UTA. (Mar.)