COME TO ME by Amy Bloom...

COME TO ME by Amy Bloom (HarperPerennial: $10; 175 pp.). In clear, straightforward prose, Bloom exposes the lives of deeply disturbed characters. The narrator of “Silver Water” allows her schizophrenic sister to die peacefully, rather than summon a doctor who would prolong her suffering; a grieving widow is swept away by her stepson’s passion in “Sleepwalking.” In three linked stories about a husband and wife cheating on their respective partners, the woman notes, “All of our time was shaved off something bigger, slivered into pieces so thin you could look right at them and never even see.”