Camping with Strangers

""My favorite card game is solitaire,"" says Tamar, the narrator of the title tale in this debut collection. It's an apt metaphor for the many alienated characters who populate the 10 stories that seek to define the destructive aspects of our culture. Loveless unions abound, as do inattentive parents, emotionally desolate families and the kind of soulless suburban neighborhoods that connote individual isolation. In the finely wrought ""Dogs,"" a young girl establishes a trusting friendship with an older man, her next-door neighbor, only to have him betray her. In ""Pressure,"" a young woman's visit to her divorced father reveals her lack of connection both to him and to her boyfriend. At the same time, she sees no available remedy: ""She'll sleep for a long time, and when she wakes up, they'll still be in the same old life, wishing for better. The present will devour the future, and quietly, too."" Many of the stories have this depressing atmosphere. ""Louise and Al Get Married"" announces in its opening sentences that a couple is doomed to an unhappy marital relationship; the story then follows the betrothed as they move toward their cheerless fate. In ""Boys,"" the collection's strongest story, a teenager takes out her frustration with her distant, self-involved parents by setting up daily ""appointments"" with local boys, who spread wild stories about what she does with them. In fact, she does nothing, and each boy is sent on his way to brag about his ""conquest."" Nawrocki makes some trenchant observations about the loneliness of many contemporary families. Over the course of the collection, however, this sense of isolation is often so profound, so all-encompassing, that it saps the energy from her more compelling characters and vivid storytelling. (May)