THE COLLECTED STORIES

Grace Paley hasn't written much, but the stories she has written are gems, and all of them (from The Little Disturbances of Man; Enormous Changes at the Last Minute; and Later the Same Day) are collected here. The narrator speaking at the end of one story, ``Wants,'' demonstrates the virtues of Paley's prose: ``I wanted to have been married forever to one person, my ex-husband or my present one. Either has enough character for a whole life, which as it turns out is really not such a long time. You couldn't exhaust either man's qualities or get under the rock of his reasons in one short life.'' Paley writes with a declarative elegance all her own, and her best characters display a dogged courage to be confused and curious about their lives.