WHY MEN ARE AFRAID OF WOMEN

Chemin, who shares this year's Flannery Acinar Award with Mary Hood (below), writes stories in a wide variety of now-standard contemporary styles. In sketches of Jewish businessmen in over their heads (""Miami,"" ""It Could Happen""), he adopts a deadpan, Yiddish-rhythmed delivery;he switches to the surly, sentimental Texas style of lost loves and rash actions for ""A Hunk of Burning Love"" and ""Sometime the Wrong Thing Is the Right Thing."" In ""La Vote,"" there's a bootless male anchoring a triangle completed by two bright, focused women, all very reminiscent of Frederick Barthelme. But only a few pieces here--e.g., two earnest adult reassessments of misunderstood fathers--go much beyond the formulas found in today's literary quarterlies. And though Chemin is deft and polished in his craftsmanship, this collection seems more like an anthology of au courant approaches than the work of a distinctive or passionate new voice.