THE GOOD LIFE

Eleven longish stories that hit about as often as they miss, in a second collection from McGraw (Lies of the Saints, 1996).

The trouble is usually with McGraw’s people—that they’re one-dimensional, say, or unbelievable, or so unprepossessing as to be loathsome—though even then the stories can have a surface interest, since McGraw is a deft realism-whiz, and things as disparate as running a B&B and being a seminary priest can come off with equal authenticity. But that’s not enough if the realism is hung on caricature, as in “The Beautiful Tennessee Waltz,” with its two paper-thin and unlikable young husbands, or in the thinny-thin “A Whole New Man,” about an activist college prof who agrees to doff his 1960s look and style—by undergoing a makeover on a TV show. There’s just nothing to him. In “Daily Affirmations,” an overweight woman of 33, support leader “for survivors of difficult childhoods,” and author of a book on the subject goes home for Christmas with her weak father and diabolically manipulative mother. And why does she go home to suffer? Dunno. Other stories succumb to the same terminal psychological thinness, like that of the hateful priest who comes on to a woman and then denies it (“Appearance of Scandal”), or the singing teacher in “One for My Baby” who inexplicably makes herself a doormat for one of the dimmest male bulbs in memory. Certain pieces, though, do succeed—like that of the priest in a mortal struggle with food-desire (“Ax of the Apostles”), or the more contrived “Lucky Devil,” about the near-breakup of an old married couple. The two very best are the on-the-mark tale of two women who were in dance school together (“The Best Friend”) and a seminary story—grippingly painful—about a young man desperate to be a priest, though he may simply be too shy and possibly not bright enough.

Skilled so-so stories in the main, with one or two real zingers.