Magician: Stories

Family obligations often bring together people who have no reason to associate other than a shared past. Such is the ``tug of the unavoidable'' that the protagonist, Dutton, feels in returning home for his disliked father's surgery in ``Bypass,'' one of the 11 finely turned stories in Turchi's ( The Girl Next Store ) second collection. Like many characters in these affecting tales, Dutton is unable to fix things. When his father tries to reconcile, Dutton balks, picturing ``a wildly sentimental scene from the worst movies.'' Likewise, in ``Everything I Need,'' a young man obsessed with talk radio cares for his grandmother, who ``needs'' only her dog and her TV. The two, he says, ``were like two sides of a broken zipper.'' In ``Layover,'' a man paralyzed with disappointment in his unfaithful wife and his scornful daughter, finds he cannot leave his hotel room. Other stories show people moving to another of life's stages. In ``False Spring,'' Turchi chronicles the gradual decline and isolation of an amiable old man, closing with a beautiful description of the man's silent passing. In Turchi's skillful handling, these quiet, ordinary lives, are memorable. (May)