The Graywolf Annual Two: Short Stories by Women

For Graywolf's second short story annual, Walker has collected work by some of the most talented women writing fiction today: Alice Adams, Bobbie Ann Mason, Louise Erdrich et al. Except for an unpublished Jane Bowles fragment and an early story by Alice Munro, the selections were written in the last year or two; the constants running through them are the primacy of money and the uncertainty of everything else in life. Among the many notable entries, Laurie Colwin's ""Old Flames'' stands out for its sharply etched images, like a memorable scene from an otherwise forgotten film. Ann Beattie's ``Cards'' is effective in suggesting the future of the lives the story only glimpses and Elizabeth Tallent's sad and funny ``Black Holes'' lovingly limns the gaps between a parent's caution and care and a child's unlimited imagination of disaster. January