A New and Glorious Life

The novella can be a difficult form, straddling the immediacy of the short story and the more luxurious pace of the novel, but Herman balances these needs with aplomb in this collection of three long stories. Filled with warm, eccentric characters, each novella explores the difficulties faced by an assortment of individuals intellectually rich but emotionally uncertain. In ""Auslander,"" the title character is a reclusive literary translator who confronts the brilliance of a poet who refuses to allow her work into public view. As Auslander is reluctantly drawn into the lives of the poet and her husband, both Romanian immigrants, the story moves steadily toward a tragedy that feels both inescapable and completely earned. In ""Hope Among Men,"" a woman is jolted from her marginal existence by two men who leave her in rapid succession. This heartbreak is predicted early by the story's narrator, a gambit that only serves to engage the reader more fully as the story unfolds. Balancing these tales is the title novella, the book's longest piece, a journey into the emotionally stunted life of Gad, a composer taking a working vacation at an artists' colony. Though married, Gad begins an intimate, liberating friendship with Hannah, a poet also working at the colony. Unwilling to rush her characters, Herman explores the full length of this friendship, slowly guiding the story toward a bright, charged conclusion. Herman (Missing) writes with vivid details, but much of this book's distinctiveness derives from her sense of pace. She writes past the point where many writers stop, trusting her characters to deliver aspects of themselves previously undetected. (July) FYI: This collection inaugurates Carnegie Mellon's short fiction series.