Bending Heaven

Fiction Notes Jessica Francis Kane's Bending Heaven contains 11 sober, affecting short stories that delve beneath the surfaces of ordinary people's lives and reveal their internal struggles. The setups are simple: a divorced lawyer worries about her teenaged son while she is on a corporate retreat (""Refuge""); a young woman moves to New York and finds the book publishing business is less literary than she expected (""How to Become a Publicist""); two newlyweds house-sit for a well-off older couple and anxieties about their new life together arise (""Ideas of Home, but Not the Thing Itself""). Kane's style is direct yet nuanced, and all her characters feel authentic; this is an impressive debut. (July)