FICTION

SAME PLACE, SAME THINGS by Tim Gautreaux (St. Martin’s: $20.95, 208 pp.). Men and work and how the two intersect is the subject of many of the short stories in Tim Gautreaux’s debut collection. This is the book’s achievement as well as its downfall. Gautreaux supplies an incredible amount of authentic detail on such arcane subjects as exactly what a Depression Era traveling pump repair man does. He is also able to use language in such a way that in a few short sentences, his characters are imbued with real complexity.

That is the achievement, now for the downfall. The majority of these pieces seem to have been built from identical blueprints, so that by the time one is halfway through this collection it is possible to predict not only how most of the stories will end factually, but the feeling of each ending as well. There is a man, generally living in Louisiana, who has a job, generally involving physical labor. The man shies away from real interaction with the world yet is simultaneously hungry for connection. A disaster happens. The man must decide whether he is going to change. There is resolution.

Taken on an individual level, nothing is wrong with these stories, but when looked at together they live up to the book’s title a little too well. Same place, same things.