ON THE GOLDEN PORCH <i> by Tatyana Tolstaya (Vintage: $8.95) </i>

In this impressive collection of stories, Tatyana Tolstaya (the great-grandniece of Leo Tolstoy) writes with biting irony about life in the Soviet Union before perestroika. Nearly all of these brief tales focus on the clash between the fragile dreams that sustain unhappy people and the harsh reality of their lives. A woman savors the company of the opulent connoisseur, Filin, in “The Fakir,” and the discovery that the treasures in the Ali Baba’s cave of his apartment are paste leaves an aching void in her life. In “Okkervil River,” a weary, aging man dreams of the romantic singer Vera Vasilevna, but his pursuit of this fantasy goddess leads to the shattering revelation that the object of his wistful passion is a fat, demanding old woman who lives off the admirers trapped in the web of her faded glamour.