MY HARD BARGAIN by Walter Kirn...

MY HARD BARGAIN by Walter Kirn (Washington Square: $9; 145 pp). Kirn’s terse, gritty stories focus on individuals who find themselves unable to resolve the conflicts between the demands of daily life and the religious beliefs they were taught as children. In “The New Timothy,” a bright young Mormon man scandalizes his family and friends by converting to Buddhism; the narrator finds himself torn between his admiration for Timothy’s spiritual rebellion and his unrequited passion for Timothy’s high school sweetheart, whom he agreed “to watch over.” An aging farmer sees the life he labored to build crumble around him in “Toward the Radical Church”: Overwhelmed by debt, his sons slipping away, his beliefs eroding, Clarence Dahlgren curses his lot like Job. Kirn avoids self-conscious embellishment and limns his sharply observed portraits in unsparing, straightforward prose.