CABBAGE AND BONES

A startling, useful gathering of 25 stories by both familiar and overlooked Irish-American women writers. There's an intriguing continuity to the collection, which ranges from the work of the now little-known writers Ruth McKenney (``Noel Coward and Mrs. Griffin''), Mary Doyle Curran (represented by an excerpt from The Parish and the Hill), and Mary Deasy (an excerpt from Hour of Spring), active in the 1930s and '40s, up to such promising young writers as Eileen Fitzgerald (``Pork Chops''), Annie Callan (``How Ireland Lost the World Cup''), and Erin McGraw (``Daily Affirmations''). Maureen Howard in her foreword suggests that this continuity has to do both with a confessional frankness in the telling, as well as with the unblinking realism with which Irish- American women have always faced the challenging particulars of life in the US. Editor Kearns has assembled an impressive group of tales, and also illuminated an overlooked tradition.