Exits and Entrances

This second book of the Time 2 Quartet takes Shakespeare's All the World's a Stage as its inspiration. The stories, sketches and a poem are called ``Lovers and Pantaloons,'' ``Mewling and Puking,'' etc., and have very little in common except that all the characters hail from Columbia Falls, Me. Columbia Falls acts as a sort of Our Town for the characters paraded into our view, all of them trying to puzzle out their lives. We have Martha and George, a young couple in the first sketch, followed by Martha and George in the next piece, 41 years later. Totally average people, they chat about their lives in a comfortable, folksy sort of way. And there's Dan Prescott, sent by his minister father into combat to make a man of him who writes back: ``Compassion . . . God suffers.'' And Doc John, a marvelous raconteur who reminisces about past tragedies, triumphs and loves and the medical instructor who sent him back to Columbia Falls to cheat death any way he can. By the author of the Fletch series, these pieces are charming in themselves, but the collection lacks cohesiveness. (May)