The Other Side

The Dutch author of the Holocaust novels, An Empty House and The Glass Bridge , again demonstrates her precise powers of observation in 17 short stories. Unsurprisingly, the most potent works here refer--explicitly or otherwise--to the events of WW II. ``The Address,'' the most widely anthologized of Minco's stories, elliptically and forcefully redefines the notion of loss: its protagonist, a young Jewish woman who, alone of her family, has survived the war, tries unsuccessfully to reclaim the family valuables from a so-called friend of her mother's. Another exceptionally moving entry, ``The Day My Sister Got Married,'' lovingly evokes the celebration of a Jewish wedding in May 1942; describing the gathering of relatives, the narrator adds, ``After the war I could see that full room in front of me. For a long time I had trouble going into a room full of people.'' Characters in pieces with more contemporary settings contemplate other types of voids. In ``Something Different,'' a middle-aged woman tries to fill the emptiness in her life by shoplifting, while another woman in ``At Seven O'Clock'' anticipates the result of a biopsy. In Minco's short fiction, as in her novels, the sparest details, the most pared-down perceptions, acknowledge the vastness of that which is left unsaid. (June)