The Disobedience of Water: Stories and Novellas

The eight lyrical stories and novellas in this collection should buoy Naslund's reputation, already riding high for her 1994 novel Sherlock in Love, even higher. Plot matters less to Naslund than voice, sympathy, setting and tone: hospitable readers will be won over right off by ""Madame Charpentier and Her Children,"" which describes a woman beginning anew after a friend's suicide: ""It was autumn and we had already gone back to teaching, but the grip of the university was still loose and the feeling of summer cradled us."" In ""The Shape You're In,"" a 25-year-old artist flees Atlanta and her disturbed ex-lover to what she hopes will be a new life in Montana. Sarah discovers, however, that her Southern habits have followed her west: ""Like many Southerners, she knows there is a kind of protection in politeness. It has a kind of beauty of its own, too."" The title story draws its power from an unconsummated love affair whose memory hangs as powerfully as any unconsummated relationship over the narrator, a single mother. She concludes, ""I will know one thing about the heart--that it can break endlessly."" Almost every entry here finds fluidity and confidence in its prose. In Naslund's tightly observed worlds, quiet betrayals resonate long after their occasions have faded. (Apr.) FYI: Naslund's next novel, Ahab's Wife, is due out in the fall.