Fun & Games

The short fictions collected here by noted black novelist and poet Major ( Painted Turtle: Woman with Guitar ) are full of style and substance but light on action. Five sections vary from slight sketches of childhood (``Ten Pecan Pies'') to wary, amusing appraisals of romance (``The Vase and the Rose'') and stark, political evocations of place and mood employing in freewheeling style the author's impressive poetic gifts (``Mobile Axis: a Triptych''). Impressive if uneven, the collection includes a few standouts in addition to these three: ``My Mother and Mitch,'' a boy's touching account of his mother's tentative relationship with a white man; and ``Letters,'' in which an amorous correspondence between a writer/editor at a black women's magazine and an old girlfriend misfires with painful hilarity. (Jan.)