TALK TO ME

A collection of clear-eyed stories that are full of promise. In ``Pillow Talk,'' Lise's father is on his third wife but she is on her first boyfriend—or is Mathias something more or less than that? An intoxicating trip to Paris opens Wes's eyes to the human depths of his lesbian parents in ``Lezboy.'' The powerful novella, ``Locker-Room Talk,'' is a disturbing look at the act of sexual harassment from the boys' perspective: Mary Fortunato, called Fat-U-Know, has enormous breasts, and the teasing, foul comments of two classmates escalate into a nasty practical joke that ends in tragedies large and small. Reality definitely bites here—it's sickening how little the boys understand their actions or the consequences. All the stories are written in the first person; each teenager is engaging in a dialogue and love affair with an emerging self. They and their families are wrestling with the rest of life as well as adolescence, in stories that hone in on a moment in time and map from it a future of myriad possibilities. (Short stories. 13-15)