The Innocent Party

Readers are confronted with an offbeat assemblage of meditations on "the demon[s] that invade [the] childhood home" and linger long after in Parkison's newest collection of stories (after Woman with Dark Horses). In a style that recalls both poetry and primer, Parkison treats violence, voyeurism, innocence, and guilt with imagery sharpened to its finest edge%E2%80%94tangled hair, murdered animals, and a woman who likens herself to the mouth of a glass bottle. Hovering indeterminately between reality and fantasy, however, the collection falls short of comprehensibility, while characters in various states of psychological disarray who fail both to know themselves and connect with one another also fail to elicit the reader's care. Like the broken glass and mirrors that litter the landscapes in these stories, Parkison's vision is fractured and her message obscured, as her fascination with ambiguity%E2%80%94admirable but under-developed%E2%80%94leaves readers uncomfortable and adrift, until, speaking through one of her characters, she offers too late: "[A]lthough I did not believe in art as therapy when%E2%80%A6happy endings were involved, I knew it could only heal me and make me feel more alive to find ways to face the truth of irrational violence." (Apr.)