Not: A Trio

Huddle is no stranger to difficult loves; his acclaimed novel, The Story of a Million Years, involved a middle-aged man's affair with his 15-year-old neighbor. These three interlocking tales see love bloom and wilt in a small New England town, a place where once and future partners encounter each other at the luncheonette and the gas station. The first story, ""Village Tale,"" places its characters squarely in compromising positions: psychologist Claire treats her new lover, Danny, as if he were one of her clients, making love to him only in her office and struggling to keep the noise down. When Danny wants to actually talk in that office, the two confront the inadequacies of their arrangement. Huddle brings the same sure-handed storytelling to ""Wherever I Am Not,"" which remembers one key morning in Claire's marriage to Ben, a dean at the local college. Ben has been confident in his daily routines: ""the patterns discernible in creation and nature incline him toward something like faith."" Those patterns threaten to break apart when his former wife tells him some unpleasant facts about their marriage. Claire narrates the third, and longest, novella in a series of short, disconnected paragraphs: readers will be glad to see more of Claire, but Huddle's formal choices here obscure the shape of his plot, making the title story the least successful of the three. Though it lacks the ambition of his novel, the collection still exhibits Huddle's strengths. He remains an accomplished observer of the pangs of middle age, of communities so tight they're nearly claustrophobic and of the strange turns love can take. (Sept.)