Escape: Stories of Getting Away [With Flaps]

A 14-year-old Odessa boy skips his violin lessons to go swimming in Isaac Babel's ""Awakening."" A prim Washington lawyer exults in an extramarital dalliance with his wife's friend in John Updike's ""Baby's First Step."" Characters like these take flight from everyday responsibilities in Escape: Stories of Getting Away. The collection, edited by Reed College Russian professor Lena Lencek and Yale University professor of medicine Gideon Bosker (who co-edited The Beach, among other anthologies) includes pieces by Harold Brodkey, Nella Larson, D. H. Lawrence, Ivan Bunin, George Saunders, Michael Chabon and other luminaries past and present.