cover image Monkey Bay

Monkey Bay

Elaine Ford. Penguin Books, $7.95 (256pp) ISBN 978-0-14-012057-8

Characters who squander their time in laundromats, trailers, partitioned offices and Pepsi Redemption Centers here populate a hostile world. ``Ford's close-up on quietly desperate lives, like Walker Evans's famous photos, is beautiful and disturbing,'' observed PW. (Aug.)