Carp Fishing on Valium

Parker--an edgy, critically acclaimed singer songwriter--makes a splendid literary debut with this collection of shorts. The 10 stories, told in the first person, follow the droll and occasionally wistful Brian Porker through a series of hobbies, vocations, girlfriends and drug-fueled exploits. (Porker's misadventures, one suspects, are based somewhat self-effacingly on Parker's own.) And what a hard-knock stew of episodes it is, from growing pains and street fights to drug-induced headaches and humiliations at the absurd hands of the music business. In ""The Sheld-Duck of the Basingstoke Canal,"" young Brian learns a sweaty, bug-bitten lesson about accumulation, social status and the rights of all living creatures. ""Bad Nose"" is a hilarious John Wayne Bobbit-meets-Gogol inspired story about a tired 22-year-old menial laborer whose refusal to take care of his infected sinuses drives his annoyed wife to take matters into her own hands. In ""Well Well Well,"" a wonderfully vindictive tale about a city slicker trying to hold his own with a couple of hardscrabble well diggers he hires, Porker explains, ""I was just some rich yuppie from the city, I wasn't going to lord it over the locals by handing out free herpetology lessons, so I just nodded and looked concerned, not mentioning that he'd have to go to Africa to get bitten by a puff adder."" Gruesome and laconic in the tradition of Roald Dahl, Parker's shorts are equal parts wit, invention and sweet cruelty, readers should enjoy frissons of schadenfreude. Author tour. (June)