The Girl with Brown Fur: Tales and Stories

Whimsical, obtuse, and maybe too content to revel in the absurd, these tales by Levine (My Horse and Other Stories) often focus on tortured relationships. "Uppsala" puts readers on notice with its first line ("We come from a bad family and we are disgraced") and commences to chart a brother and sister's unfortunate vacation under the manic coercion of their mother. Another intensely strange relationship develops in "And You Are?" about the manic-depressive Janice-Katie and her elderly former babysitter, Mrs. Beck, who grows increasingly belligerent (or perhaps senile) until the two coexist in two private, slightly inharmonious worlds. In "The Kidney Problem," a couple on the eve of their wedding face a gamut of hilariously incapacitating health problems, while "Sausage," set in a futuristic Communist-style factory, sees the proficient sausage maker narrator bent on being the model worker, only to get an invigorating, dangerous whiff of freedom. Levine works spare details and an edgy humor to often great effect, though many of the 28 stories come off feeling more like exercises than full-blooded fiction. (Apr.)