I Know Some Things: Stories about Childhood by Contemporary Writers

These marvelous, fiercely articulate stories liberate the buried child lurking in every adult. Each of the 20 tales is narrated by a youngster or by a grown-up looking back with rueful hindsight. Emotional complexity is the keynote. In Margaret Atwood's ``Betty,'' a girl identifies with a ``nice'' woman neighbor but later rejects her as a role model when the facade of her perfect marriage crumbles. In Spalding Gray's funny, freewheeling ``Sex and Death to the Age 14,''title ok an irrepressible boy growing up in a Christian Science household explores his budding sexuality. The rebellious, pot-smoking heroine of Sheila Schwartz's ``Out-of-the-Body Travel''ok must come to terms with her father's desertion and her embittered mother's mental collapse. Amy Tan, Susan Minot, Jamaica Kincaid, Peter Meinke, Leonard Michaels, Harold Brodkey and Alice Munro, among others, explore such issues as divorce, absentee fathers, the immigrant experience, insomnia and a boy's awakening to his homosexuality. These unforgettable, immediate stories reveal how children continually revise their road map of the fearsome, beckoning adult world. (July)