FICTION

BIGGER ‘N DALLAS by Kurt Tidmore (Grove Weidenfeld: $17.95; 185 pp.). Tidmore excels in down-home realism and brims with good cheer as he sets up his characters on the lonesome Texas prairie and plays with their lives like a devious god. There’s the woman who is uncommonly beautiful except for one eye that doesn’t move, the Vietnam veteran who returns to his “Real World” and finds it unreal, the retired history teacher who gets lost in a Texas windstorm, and Spuds Merton, the owner of the Bigger ‘n Dallas bar who thinks the old teacher is a bad man coming to rob him. Each chapter is a separate story, although connecting strands are woven throughout, and the book ends abruptly in a hilarious last story that leaves you wanting more.