Mysteries of the Body and the Mind

The daydreams and meditations that Taylor passes off as ""mysterious"" in his second collection of stories (after The Presence of Things Past) are in fact too often forays into the most insipid of anxieties. One narrator wonders whether he will ever meet his childhood sweetheart again. Another muses about whatever happened to a squirrelly, pimpled boy whose inability to attract women suddenly moves her 10 years later. Yet another puzzles over why middle-aged women who seemed cruel when he was young seem kinder now that he is an adult. Tiresome as they are, these questions (and their equally listless answers) are all that animate these 24 stories, which shuttle between the author's native Midwest and his adopted Paris. A typical example, ""The Bon Ton,"" describes the sordid tavern that was a source of fascination to the narrator during childhood, then uses this disenchanted landmark as a very loose springboard to recount a buddy's failed first love; the engagement falls apart, we are solemnly told, because he forgets to buy his betrothed a corsage for the senior prom. Reminiscing about these events years later, the narrator finally admits what the reader has suspected all along, that ""there was nothing else to say."" (May)