The Comedians

In this collection of stories and one novella, L'Heureux ( A Woman Run Mad ) explores the possibilities for faith and redemption in a secular age. Suffused with a religious, almost supernatural vision of life's mystery, his Flannery O'Connor-like moral tales expose the perverse secrets hidden in our hearts and capture the irreversible moments in which lives are forever changed. A creative writing teacher in ``Poison Girls'' suddenly sees himself through the eyes of three students who despise him--and is ruined; in ``Comedians'' a pregnant stand-up comedian hears her deformed fetus singing. As a character in ``Themselves'' explains, faith ``isn't something you choose, it's something you're given, except that in a way you have to want to choose it.'' L'Heureux, Lane Professor of Humanities at Stanford, lightens his profoundly serious spiritual load with witty, buoyant prose and an ironic, urbane sensibility. (Feb.)