THE TOMCAT’S WIFE AND OTHER STORIES ...

THE TOMCAT’S WIFE AND OTHER STORIES by Carol Bly (HarperPerennial: $9.) Bly’s colorful short stories depict seemingly ordinary, everyday inhabitants of the upper Midwest who find themselves in unlikely situations. In the title story, a housewife suspects her husband of falling in love with another man, yet pursues an odd friendship with his alcoholic, emotionally abused wife. Her descriptions occasionally echo Garrison Keillor’s stories about Minnesota: At his child’s baptism, a father muses, “How could any realistic person ask those particular three godparents ‘to renounce the vain pomp and glory of the world’? Where would that crew get any glory in the first place?” Bly offers an interesting but oddly skewed vision of the American heartland.