GIGANTIC

In this clever, raucous debut collection, intriguing newcomer Nesbitt offers 10 stories that explore a hard, racially charged world, bitterness and compassion vying for top billing. The first story, "The Ones Who May Kill You in the Morning," sets the tone with its tale of class and racial warfare on the huge estate of a processed-meat magnate ("His baloney has a first name and it's his"). After the young black narrator endures a humiliating job as a glorified lawn ornament—he's dressed up in a jockey's outfit to welcome guests—he finds himself sought out by the magnate's white daughter for some slumming sex. This thinly veiled rebellion against her father doesn't last long, and the situation soon deteriorates into violence. In "What Good Is You Anyway?" a young man offers this frank assessment of living with his alcoholic father: "We're like most fathers and sons: not much to say, never live up to the other's expectations." Still, he's drawn to his father's ne'er-do-well friends, who together started a black fraternity back in college. In "Man in Towel with Gun," a man takes on a sad and hilarious quest to find his girlfriend, who seems to have disappeared from their house on short notice. If the other stories don't hold together as well as these, Nesbitt's idiosyncratic voice, his sharp-tongued observations and his convincing, colloquial dialogue communicate a unique and arresting worldview. (Mar. 2)

Forecast:Nesbitt, a standout among this year's crop of new writers, has been published in the New Yorker and Harper's. That exposure, and an eight-city author tour, should help Gigantic make a strong showing.