At First I Hope for Rescue

These five linked stories confront a range of contemporary ills and bewilderments: incest, bulimia, past-life regression, mental illness and substance abuse. Most of the tales are set in the fictional resort town of Ruth, British Columbia, and some take place in the American West. At the heart of the matter is the primordial tug-of-war between the sexes. Rubinsky's men are generally loutish, if not criminally abusive, and the women more or less endure them. In ""Necessary Balance,"" motel proprietor Bet Harker wishes for something more than ""a useless mate and a shabby resort."" Embarrassed by her ""thick-waisted, sausage-legged self stuffed into [a] new Sears catalogue summer dress,"" Bet can't stop her fantasy of dancing with Larry, her best friend's husband, even though, next to her husband, ""Larry is my least favorite man."" By the story's end, however, Bet's life has been so shattered that she yearns for a return to the merely ordinary. In ""Algorithms,"" a Santa Barbara, Calif., housewife is unable to tell her perfectionist gynecologist husband about their daughter's bulimia, for which he is probably to blame. The former mental patient who narrates ""The Other Room"" reviews her life, which comes in and out of focus as it entwines with her imagined past as a concentration-camp survivor. ""Road's End"" confirms the sick truth in the local belief that women want to be abused. With the exception of a few moments, it's all pretty bleak and loveless, but Rubinsky writes in a gritty first-person voice that allows her characters to express insight, both deliberate and unconscious, into their confounded souls. (Apr.)