Veteran novelist Bingham (Straight Man) displays her solid command of narrative as well as her unique voice in an impressive collection of short fiction that finds aging men and women in a variety of erotic and romantic scenarios. The range is noteworthy: "Apricots" features an older professor jarring fruit with one of her charges, a college student who proceeds to seduce her after outlining her shortcomings in the class he attended, while "Benjamin" focuses on the cheeky, lecherous antics of a famous 90-year-old artist who takes his final stab at youth by trying to bed a series of attractive young girls. "Loving" tells the story of an older couple's plan to take a spur-of-the-moment trip to sea caves on Crete, where the husband long ago had a tryst with a girl from Cincinnati. In "A Remarkably Pretty Girl," a young, recently divorced woman walking home after a one-night stand sees her entire future unfold before her in a hopeful, exuberant vision: "Eventually, there would be even more children…Eventually, it would begin to seem unlikely that anyone, even a hairdresser had ever called her a remarkably pretty girl. And then she would begin to live." "Rat," in contrast, finds a woman regretting an adventurous affair after her lover gets sick and she feels obligated to help with his ongoing care. Bingham explores the unexpected and sometimes disconcerting underside of experience in these pages, revealing an admirable gift for subtlety and understatement. (Nov.)
