FICTION

STRIPPING and Other Stories by Pagan Kennedy (Serpent’s Tail/High Risk Books: $10.99 paper; 169 pp.). String together the names of the author, book and publisher--Pagan, “Stripping,” and Serpent’s Tail, respectively--and you’re likely to think of latter-day witches and furtive, canbalistic rituals. Don’t be put off, though; “Stripping” is literary fiction of high quality, the sort of story collection that the big, commercial houses should publish but frequently avoid. Credit Serpent’s Tail, consequently, for believing that Pagan Kennedy deserves a mainstream audience beyond the Boston area, where she produces a magazine and a cable television show. Both the ‘zine and the show carry the name “Pagan” in their titles, which implies a self-conscious, rebellious narcissism, but most of the stories in this collection are in fact middle-class traditional, taking place in summer camps, Elvis’ Graceland, college buildings and ordinary suburban homes. In “Camp,” shy girl meets shy boy, and the narrator--wearing make-up for the first time, and a new haircut--finds herself thinking “For all he knew, back home I might be popular”; in “The Black Forest” a college student discovers Nietzsche, and her earlier life now seems “like Ohio: flat, but with a fast, sparkling river of doubt running through it”; in “The Tunnel,” a girl recalls lying for the first time, and remembers going “on and on and it was like singing, like the hymns we sang in church that went straight up to God.” These stories are typical of “Stripping” in that they show smart young women attempting to make sense of a perplexing world, one not so much hostile as unpredictable and indifferent. Take “Shrinks,” for example; in this tale Sara says she’s decided to take Prozac, just like her mother, because Sara half-believes the drug “will keep me distracted, which is better than being neurotic.”