Quick Bright Things: Stories

A broad and often moving short story collection by poet Wallace (The Uses of Adversity) recounts the travails and triumphs of a Midwestern man from boyhood to middle age. When protagonist Peterson Kingsley narrates, he alternates between charming sincerity and self-involved anxiety. Other stories are written in the third-person, in which the hero manifests the same characteristics but at a refreshing distance. The first of 21 entries, ""Talking,"" sets a dark tone for the book--young Peterson witnesses his father's suffering from multiple sclerosis--but that tone increasingly lightens with humor and compassion as the stories accumulate. This progression reflects Peterson's journey toward maturity and solidifies his believability and likability. At his father's funeral in ""The Night Nurse,"" Peterson's biting observations about the minister who did not know his father, the fidgety people in attendance and his mother's pompous new boyfriend effectively and subtly communicate the boy's grief and anger. ""Wordplay"" is an entertaining story of grad-student Peterson's thriving vanity press business, and his relationship with a clever Korean poet who schemes to use the self-publishing venture to convince the Korean government to let him stay in the U.S. The insights of ""The New Sidewalks"" prove Peterson to be more than a droll commentator. He is now unhappily married, with a baby daughter whose slow growth and nonstop crying are attributed to retardation; he is also a professor of history, yet his sudden memory loss ironically erases the past. Not all the Kingsley chronicles are as charming and as well crafted as these, however. The short short ""Siding"" appears to be an unfinished writing exercise, and ""The Little Woman"" is a brief, overwrought sketch. The title story is a sentimental but inspired recap of moments in Peterson's life that appeared in previous stories, offering a deft and thematically satisfying closure for the collection. Agent, Susan Schulman. (Feb.)