ROUGH TRANSLATIONS by Molly Giles (University...

ROUGH TRANSLATIONS by Molly Giles (University of Georgia Press: $9.95; 135 pp.). Giles’ most engaging stories focus on women confronting a world they don’t quite understand. After her divorce, the narrator of “A Jar of Emeralds” proclaims, “I have two marriages behind me, thousands to go.” In “Old Souls,” a woman feels cheated because she didn’t receive the psychic gifts other women in family claim to possess; when her sister experiences a premonition of death, she suggests it may just be “schizophrenia, which she’s always wanted.” The bittersweet pictures of slightly muddled lives have an appeal that Giles’ attempts at tragedy lack.