Here: Stories

Perspectives often shift in this second collection (after Satin Palms) of 14 stories, many of which portray the lives people lead once their idealism is gone. The female narrators of ``Stephen'' and ``Really Love Him'' take contrasting views of brief affairs, but both are realists who long ago discovered what they can expect from life. ``Happy Father's Day'' depicts a middle-aged man's relationship with his dying father as a prelude to the one he forges years later with his own grown children. ``Addison,'' on the other hand, chronicles a life devoid of close ties yet filled with sexual encounters and self-delusions that fall away only after the death of an acquaintance. The collection's standout is ``Traveler,'' a truly scary tale in which the narrator pretends to be the woman she thinks she's been mistaken for, only to discover that the joke is on her; once she reaches that recognition, the tension--accompanied by intimations of violence--never lets up. Ranging from frightening to strange to poignant, Inness-Brown's work powerfully prompts us to examine where we've been and where we're going. (Mar.)