The Fate of Others: Stories

Bausch (Playhouse) delivers a wondrous collection of stories about the tempestuous lives of ordinary people. The narrator of “In That Time” reminisces about his trip to Cuba in 1949 with his widowed father and his father’s new wife. After his parents send him away during one of their arguments, he shares a meal with Ernest Hemingway, who unexpectedly takes him seriously. In the title story, English professor and lapsed writer Billy Jordan hosts his father-in-law, famous poet Thomas Fearing, for a reading at his university. After the event, Billy barhops with Thomas and feels guilty for encouraging the older man’s drunken antics. “Donnaiolo,” titled after an Italian word for womanizer, follows an American woman who moves back in with her parents after a brief marriage to an Italian man whom Italian authorities are trying to extradite from the U.S. for statutory rape. In “The Long Consequence,” a couple’s 22-year-old son gets drunk after his girlfriend leaves him and crashes his car into a neighbor’s house. In the aftermath, his parents fight over whether he deserves their forgiveness. The spectacular closer, “Broken House,” finds a group of lifelong friends looking back on a life-changing incident that occurred when they were altar boys in the 1960s. In each entry, Bausch exhibits a mastery of cringe-inducing and sometimes heartbreaking miscommunication, as his characters talk to each other at cross-purposes. These insightful stories pack a punch. Agent: Henry Dunow, Dunow, Carlson & Lerner. (May)