A Night of Music: Stories

Sandor's first collection of short fiction reveals how people at various stages of life seek to understand often ambiguous or inexplicable events that become crucial milestones in their existence. In the poignant, delicate ``Victrola,'' a child observes the accommodation her husbandless, Mexican mother makes for a new, perhaps better, life. The title story features a nine-year-old girl watching her parents and her uncle in a drama of costumes and music she will not understand until much later. In ``The Gittel,'' a Jewish woman's innocent dream of returning to her childhood home in Berlin is shattered by an ominous challenge to her passport. The stories are rich in pathos and joy, skillful in technique and, in the current mode, inconclusive. (Oct.)