Dinner Along the Amazon

Canadian novelist Findley (The Wars, Famous Last Words) here offers an impressive if uneven collection of 12 short stories. The best of the lot are written in strong, straightforward prose. Perhaps the most affecting is ""Lemonade,'' which opens the volume and describes how a sensitive eight-year-old boy deals with his alcoholic mother's gradual physical and mental disintegration. Also effective is ``War,'' a WW II story of a boy's reaction to the news that his father is joining the army; so is ``SometimeLaterNot Now,'' in which the narrator tells of the sad life of a woman whom he has loved since childhood. The book's weaker entries are Findley's more experimental stories, including the apocalyptic ``What Mrs. Felton Knew'' and several ``prose scenes'' from plays. November