cover image Shares and Other Fictions

Shares and Other Fictions

Richard Stern. Delphinium Books, $19.5 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-671-78040-1

Stern's ( Noble Rot , etc.) style is arresting--sharp-edged and telegraphic. It works best in the first story in this new collection, ``The Illegibility of This World,'' about an aging father who worries about his children and his own mortality: ``The cold air feels wonderful. The small lights of the small houses, the interrogative iron curl of the lampposts, the pools of moonlight on the metal skin of the cars; beautiful. I don't want to leave this.'' His voice is profound, homely and unsentimental: ``Annie's Anne has my stuff in her, and when she signals the doctors to turn off my life, she shuts off part of her own spigot. Thought. Ghosts. Spooks. The world, so clear and snug, isn't.'' Some of the characters who populate other stories, a novel and the title work, ``a novel in ten pieces,'' may strike readers differently: the composer vacationing in a nest of academic vipers, the Illinois shoe store owner with literary--and other--passions, and the reservist who participates in Desert Storm while meditating on Pre-Socratic philosophy are so intricately erudite as to seem humanly distant. Still, Stern's voice is assertively distinct and inventive, and sometimes corrosively funny. (Sept.)