KISS IN THE HOTEL JOSEPH CONRAD And Other Stories

From Norman, author of the acclaimed novel The Northern Lights (1987), here are seven stories invariably bright in detail but otherwise often commonplace or drifting--with the exception of one, which sends out a quiet sunburst of loveliness. The title story is a rambling and anticlimactic tale of an inexplicable ne'er-do-well who for 20 years nurses his love for a girl he first sees in a kissing booth--its drawn-out comic details failing to bring it to psychological life. ""Jenny Aloo,"" about an Eskimo woman who dies believing that her missing son is captured inside a jukebox, is a familiar story of country folk but in an exotic setting (on the edge of Hudson Bay); and ""Laughing and Crying"" captures small-town Indiana in the 1950's but maunders weakly as the story of a boy with divorced parents. Again and again, Norman captures the detail and atmosphere of a place, yet the stories themselves wither instead of grow. ""Catching Heat"" is expert on the aura of horse racing, but the story becomes merely miniature (man is jilted by girl); ""Whatever Lola Wants"" deftly evokes Hollywood of the 1940's in the loose-jointed story of an actress and a set-designer who end up running a motel in snowbound New England; and ""Milk Train"" has the sharp-eyed and quaint period flavor (Vermont, 1912) of a technicolor movie, but the story (a man's thoughts after a local train wreck) seems mainly an excuse for the details. The great exception here is ""Old Swimmers,"" quietly ambitious and resonant both in symbol and psychology: a young boy goes to Halifax to visit an eccentric aunt whom his family has ostracized (they've considered her increasingly odd since she survived a ferry sinking in 1942), and what he finds shimmers with magic and sorrow and delight. Expertly surfaced pieces looking for focus and depth, with one, though, that's a wonderfully accomplished rarity.