Birch Lane Press Presents American Fiction, Number 4: The Best Unpublished Short Stories By...

The quality of the work in the fourth collection in this series is disappointingly uneven. While several selections are compelling for settings that evoke moods of quiet desperation, the stories often withhold crucial details about characters' lives, leaving readers with many unanswered questions. Joshua Sinel's tale of a couple grieving over the death of their daughter, for instance, fails to convey a sense of who the daughter was. Annie Dawid doesn't develop her characters fully in her tale of a 20-year-old alcoholic who blames her divorced parents for ``her ill-equipped and so-far-failing venture to adulthood.'' The most accomplished of the stories is Clint McCown's portrait of an ailing, retired car salesman who derives anarchistic pleasure from keeping mules outside his glassed-in patio. To him, their braying, is ``solid and strong, with a wild streak flashing crazily through its heart.'' The collection does harbor a wide range of voices and styles, including Alyce Miller's powerful tale of a white teenager trying to pass among her black friends and David Conrad's lyrical depiction of a half-Vietnamese boy's search for his American G.I. father. White teaches writing at Springfield College; Davis is the author of Rumors from the Lost World. (July)