cover image The Pleasure Within: Short Stories

The Pleasure Within: Short Stories

Robert Carter. Atheneum Books, $15.95 (96pp) ISBN 978-0-689-11998-9

There is little that is ordinary in this collection of 11 short stories by an award-winning Australian writer ( The Sugar Factory ). ``From opening till closing time, Anthony lives inside the wooden flip-top rubbish container which houses the plastic rubbish bags at McDonald's''; so begins ``Kid in a Bin,'' a memorable view of life from the viewpoint of a young runaway. With artful simplicity, the relationship between an old man, a grizzled bricklayer, and a child is evoked: ``Attached to his pocket, the small white fist of his grandson.'' The mysteriously closed world of the autistic is entered in the title story. Quisling in ``The Tergiversator,'' a primordal couple in ``Mal and Fem,'' a skeletal family in ``Drought'' offbeat characters in little-frequented locales, and the mysteries of borderline lives, are the unconventional materials that Carter shapes into startling tales. (October)