The Shadow

These 23 short and really short stories (some a mere three pages) plod forward and tangle together in the manner of restless, unsatisfyingly dreams. Characters haunt darkened streets, endure long, monthly trips across the sea to their loves and zoom through tunnels in trains. They notice how the light hits the street, peer surreptitiously through first-floor windows at residents' silhouettes and refuse to carry on conversations on stalled trains because a train not in motion is ""an unacceptable gift,... [a] useless waste of time."" Levinson, a native of Buenos Aires, is the recipient of literary awards in Argentina and abroad. Her stories resemble poems, with words tripping over themselves and often repeating. Occasionally, the poetry is affecting enough to make you disregard the fact that individual scenes are captured at the expense of plot and character. Generally, though, it is vague, cloying and melodramatic, as in a musing on a trapped spider: ""...poor implacable things. The assassination of the world was quiet ritual. Death was the fulfillment of promise and change. I felt nauseated and at the same time permeated in ineffable beauty... one word: hunger."" (Nov.)