FICTION

CLOSING THE SEA by Yehudit Katzir (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: $18.95; 147 pp.) Katzir is a literary trespasser and something of a psychological quick-change artist. She sneaks into one woman’s skull and sees the gown and jewels she covets; she peers under people’s clothing and sees their weary bodies, and, in the first of four novellas, inhabits the mind and heart of a young girl who discovers sex with her adoring cousin. These four novellas, translated from the Hebrew, have an astonishing emotional range, all the more impressive because Katzir cares nothing for grandstanding. She is not a showoff;sometimes a page requires a slow second reading, a savoring, to appreciate the depth of feeling she has uncovered. “Schlaffstunde,” the story of the two cousins, captures adolescent giddiness, passion and confusion in heart-wrenching proportion. Stories overlap, as they do in real life; the man who interrupts the two cousins’ lovemaking is in the midst of his own tragic story, which soon distracts the cousins from each other, and his fate in turn folds into their grandmother’s tale. This is a powerful, evocative work from a strong young writer.