Tales from the Irish Club: A Collection of Short Stories

In this collection of short stories, Goran (professor of English at the University of Miami and author of The Paratrooper of Mechanic Avenue) excels at painting the vibrant backdrop of an Irish American neighborhood; he's not quite so successful at portraying the characters and events in the foreground. Almost all of these begin with extensive backstory on a single character and take far too long to get to the plot. Goran does have a pleasant, almost musical tone, though, and that goes a long way toward making these readable, if not groundbreaking. In ""Now That Maureen's Thirty,"" high school librarian Maureen is receiving anonymous notes and suspects that they come from the married assistant principal. Pauline Conlon weighs ""Mortality"" (appropriate, as she has buried three husbands and is now marrying a fourth). ""The Payment"" follows a returning Vietnam veteran who married a respectable woman but couldn't shake other, phantom women from his mind; he eventually ""resumed his popularity among the whores, as if he had never left."" These stories are divided into vaguely titled sections such as ""First There's Life"" and ""Boys in the Age of Miracles"" that do not do much to bring order to this sweet, but somewhat scattered, work. (Mar.)