Birch Lane Presents American Fiction: The Best Unpublished Short Stories by Emerging Writers

This contemporary anthology presents a variety of interesting stories, technically adept and bold in choice of narrative voice. Emily Hammond limns a college girl, Wanda, who becomes sexually entangled with a prison inmate, Mace, while doing community service at the Youth Authority. This unsentimentally told story also disarmingly illuminates character. ``You're not nice, are you? . . . ``You're maybe like dirty inside, right?'' Mace says, shockingly pinpointing how Wanda feels about herself. In Laurie Alberts's hapless, hopeless yet exhilarating story, a married Russian instructor of English and an American exchange teacher find their tryst--and their mutual illusions--destroyed by the unexpected arrival of the parents of the seaman whose apartment they were using. When the American flees in humiliation, the Russian observes sadly that ``she'd retreated back into her Americanness--a place he couldn't go.'' Other accomplished works include Christina Adam's tale of a woman simultaneously mourning her husband's death and the loss of a former lover, and Jessica Neely's magical story of a girl's memories of her stepfather and alcoholic mother and the ``pretend'' world they shared. (Aug.)