High Infidelity: 24 Great Short Stories about Adultery by Some of Our Best Contemporary Authors

In Ethan Canin's ""The Year of Getting to Know Us,"" a teenager innocently discovers his father in another woman's arms. Later, he remarks, ""I think the history of marriage can be written like this: `People Want Too Much.'"" McNally's collection sheds painfully bright light on this desire with consistently sturdy work from 24 of today's best short-story writers. These include John Updike, Bharati Mukherjee, Robert Boswell, Russell Banks, Margaret Atwood and T. Coraghessan Boyle, as well as younger writers of formidable talent such as Sara Powers and Marly Swick. In these tales, adultery emerges from love, sorrow or neglect, regardless of gender or sexual orientation and with stunningly varied consequences. To the contributors' credit, the stories try neither to explain adultery nor to excuse it. Their cumulative effect, however, will harrow the jealous, resonate for the wandering-eyed and appeal to anyone who has ever known how it feels to betray or be betrayed. (July)