A Cast of Spaniards: Stories

Jacobs, a career diplomat who regularly publishes stories in major literary reviews, speaks with the voice of intimate experience in these dozen stories set in Central and South America. In lush descriptive passages, he makes a foreign land intimate and accessible. He has created an equally compelling cast characters-Americans, Latin Americans, revolutionaries, romantics, criminals, and average people-that illustrate the violence and passion in both the people and the landscape. In powerful language Jacobs twists the reader's point-of-view, forcing one to see the land through its people but also to understand how attachment to the land influences actions. From a girl's coming-of-age in the touching ``The Necessary Plane'' to the exhilarating ``The Book of Pain and Suffering'' in which the narrator loses himself (almost literally) in the mystical stories of a local Paraguayan woman, the author evokes a difficult beauty. It's rare that a collection of short stories is so consistent, but Jacobs' exquisite craftsmanship never wavers. (Nov.)