Trying to Smile and Other Stories: And Other Stories

In many of the stories in this auspicious debut collection, ``slice of life'' becomes the almost literal mode: it's as if a keen sensibility has been used like a knife to cut through surface, details and telling behavior to dislodge what is at once particular and representative of the whole. Two of the entries are, in fact, governed by ``slices'' of time: ``The First Weekend'' revolves around an unlikely pair of lovers who have just moved in together, and ``One Whole Day'' describes a young mother's pain when her marriage breaks up and her hard-won resolve, which emerges during the first 24 hours of her newly single life. In the final story, ``Celia,'' a girl's apparently casual visit to her former stepmother triggers her belated understanding of their relationship and a new anxiety for what lies ahead. Insouciant observations give Lewis's work the ring of truth, and she further disarms the reader by recasting each story's major characters as minor figures elsewhere. Her deft fiction locates the precise moment in which, despite great pain, we try to smile nevertheless. (June)