Close Calls: New Lesbian Fiction

""What is a lesbian story?"" So asks Rogers in the introduction to this anthology, the sixth she has edited (Sportsdykes; Another Wilderness; etc.). Requiring only the simple criteria that the works be written by a woman and feature a lesbian character, she lets the stories themselves respond to the question. Happily, no restrictive answer emerges: the stories in this collection encompass all the possibilities of the form in general, yielding some delightful results. They represent a panoply of experience, voice and style, from the voice of a stripper who's ""a drag queen trapped in a woman's body"" in Rebecca Lavine's ""Skin Queen"" to a modern-day Cinderella's misunderstood and not so evil stepsister in Kathryn Kingsbury's ""Wicked Stepsisters."" Barbara Wilson's ""Still Life,"" about a watercolor painter's desire to paint her life ""wet on wet to the edges,"" and Anna Livia's ""Lightning Dances Over the Prairie Like Lust at a Nightclub,"" in which a misplaced San Franciscan finds herself blown Wizard of Oz-like to the Midwest, are particularly memorable. With very few exceptions, the tales here are of high literary quality. There is no shortage of anthologies of lesbian writing, but Rogers's success in illuminating contemporary lesbian life in all its diversity should secure a place for Close Calls among the best of the crop. (Nov.)