City of Boys: Stories

Set in Midwestern suburbs, New York City and Florida, this accomplished debut collection homes in on girls and women struggling to cope with disappointment and emotional abandonment. Like the preteens in ``The Cocktail Hour'' and ``Riding into Day,'' they may be the hapless daughters of alcoholics or the progeny of troubled marriages; they can't quite comprehend their creeping sense of doom. The adult protagonists are emotionally disconnected survivors of relationships gone sour; Terry, at the center of ``Minor Casualties,'' has a lawn littered with the carcasses of animals killed by the cat her ex-boyfriend left behind. In the title story, one of the most powerful entries, a Midwesterner finds refuge from her oppressive mother in the arms of an older woman, but knows the affair is ephemeral. As the woman's former (male) lover tells the girl: ``I was the one before you, and you're just the one before someone else.'' Nugent's oblique style reveals her characters' inner lives and renders them sympathetic without soliciting the reader's pity. At her best, writing from the points of view of young girls who long for love and acceptance, the author imbues her subjects' alienation with a rare depth of feeling. (June)