THE FIFTH SEASON

The Fifth Season ($19.95, paper $11.95; June 1996; 134 pp.; 1- 57366-015-9; paper 1-57366-016-7). A first collection, winner of the Nilon Award for Excellence in Minority Fiction, consisting of brief, Beckett-like distillations of psychic experience. Angel's strange, demanding stories, set—when settings are specified—in the Latino subcultures of southern California, pay as much attention to geometrical shapes and architectural designs as to the emotional states which they appear to influence and with which they dreamily correspond. Images of enclosure and extension thus resonate through such obscure yet seductive stories as ``Home'' (which registers visions that may go through a drowning man's mind) and ``Carl's World'' (which memorably relates a hospital janitor's complex apprehension of human vulnerability and mortality). What Yeats called ``the fascination of what's difficult'' makes these gnomic, powerful pieces frequently as rewarding as they are challenging.