Blue Spruce: Stories Blue Spruce: Stories

Twelve precise, thoughtfully written and strangely seductive stories describe a world filled with misfits and maimed souls with gaping spiritual holes. Witness the mysteriously estranged brother in ``Perro Semihundido'' (the title of a Goya painting), who has neglected to tell his sister about the love affair that is central to his life. Or Marly Wilcox, the young protagonist of the brilliant ``Attraction,'' who slides into a loveless romantic quadrangle for no particular reason. Or the two lonely, desperate older women of the title story, sisters-in-law who just can't seem to come to grips with their past. The stories, which take place in rural Montana, Massachusetts and Washington, are so perfectly fitted to their settings that they are unimaginable in any other places. They come alive at unexpected moments with a sudden forcefulness: a surprise surges through a matter-of-fact description like a lightning bolt, as when a teenage girl coolly gouges out her classmate's eye. Long's (Early Return) voice has an unerring pitch, and his insight is equally impressive: his characters have no hopes except for the possibility of love. The narrator of ``Perfection,'' a high school girl who witnesses a murder, describes what she wants from love: ``It would have to be good and strong, it would need to carry all the weight in the world.'' Long is a true craftsman who measures that weight and its burden on the lives of ordinary people who are looking for a way to survive. Author tour. (Mar.)