HOW YOU LOSE: A Novel in Stories

Fifteen linked short stories make up this strong debut novella, which explores a young woman's life after a trauma that she's determined to overcome. In the first story, 18-year-old protagonist Melody Wells returns to the now-empty Denver house where a burglar killed her father and shot and left her for dead. Several other stories follow Mel over the next 13 years, during which time she travels to escape her pain and becomes a writer; Amberchele's clear, vigorous prose brings Mel's resilient spirit to life. It's a shock to get inside the mind of the killer, Alex Pitts, former druggie and eternal lost soul, as he tries to escape from prison in the title story. Another, entitled "State Hospital," revisits Pitt in a psychiatric unit after the crime. The stories about Mel's friends are less effective, but Amberchele hits the literary bull's-eye with Mel, particularly in the narratives where she meets the man she seems destined to marry, "Hardly Friends" and "Do I Know You?" These clear and nuanced narratives pack a cumulative wallop, although Amberchele seems to be such a natural storyteller that this might have been a more focused book with a conventional linear approach. What makes it work is the author's ability to convey Mel's sense of loss and wrenching agony as she moves toward her cathartic meeting with Pitts in the final story, the outcome of which is rendered all the more poignant by the fact that Amberchele himself is currently serving time in prison. Agent, Sam Stoloff at Frances Goldin Literary Agency. (June)

Forecast:This book is sure to create news by virtue of the author's circumstances and his evident talent. Two of his stories were awarded first prize in the annual PEN prison writing contest, and it's likely that the literary community will take notice.