FICTION

I BELIEVE IN ANGELS by Fiona Cooper (Serpent’s Tail: $12:99; 146 pp.) On the surface, “I Believe in Angels,” a spotty collection of short stories, has vastly different characters. An old woman continues to dance through terrible physical pain, a child relies heavily on guardian angels, objects keep disappearing in the world of a mentally ill woman and a young penguin searches for the meaning of warmth.

Yet, in spite of these obvious differences, every story feels strangely alike. Fiona Cooper is a friendly writer, an enthusiastic writer, but she’s also a writer with an agenda. Even in the darker stories, her overwhelming message seems to be, “Love life!” and while that’s certainly worthwhile, it sometimes feels as if Cooper is prodding her characters to inspire us with whimsy, much the way a mother will prod her child to play the oboe in a class recital.

The exception to this is the book’s centerpiece, “Ilsa’s War,” a story about the relationship between a frustrated writer and an irreverent old woman. Although the request to love life is still a very large component, it goes down much easier when accompanied by interesting three-dimensional characters who help us ask the questions instead of giving us all the answers.