cover image Bliss: and Other Short Stories

Bliss: and Other Short Stories

Ted Gilley, Univ. of Nebraska, $14.95 (136p) ISBN 978-0-8032-3261-7

Gilley's debut collection offers admirably constructed narratives from which his troubled protagonists emerge bearing small, resonant victories. The narrator of "Vanishing World" is the youngest son of a suburban Connecticut family that blows apart in the 1960s: mom, unsure this is the life she had envisioned, has an affair; dad struggles to maintain a clientele for artwork falling out of style; one of his twin sisters is murdered; and the narrator experiences his first homosexual love affair while in the navy. In the beautifully depicted "White," a married couple recognizes in the space of a quick, explosive argument the fatal flaws in their relationship. The "lost" young woman narrator of "House of Prayer" becomes vulnerable to the proselytizing of her born-again Christian roommate at the same time she's shaken by her boyfriend's infidelity and her bipolar sister's psychotic episodes. Another lovable misfit redeems himself from misunderstanding in the title story by declaring: "All my life, I seem to have been mistaken for someone else." Telling, make-or-break moments are the crux of Gilley's stories, allowing his sharply etched characters to find unexpected purpose under fire. (Sept.)