KEY WEST TALES

Written in the years just before his death, 15 stories by Hersey (Antoinetta, 1991, etc.) characterized by the same subtle wisdom about human nature and the same haunting resolutions that mark his best work. ``Get Up Sweet Slug-a-Bed,'' the longest and strongest piece here, concerns the struggle of an independent, charming man to preserve something of his style while dying of AIDS and captures the sad drama of terminal illness. Other stories are little more than sketches, but even these short takes earn their keep: In ``Page Two,'' Hersey writes fake crime reports, notably of a robbery that included among its booty Chinese satin shoes that ``had slender upsweeping forms at the front like swan's necks.'' The perpetrator is spotted walking up a Key West street wearing the shoes: ``Mr. Francis cheerfully confessed the thefts and asked the duty officer whether he had ever seen such beautiful shoes.'' Meanwhile, ``Did You Ever Have Such Sport,'' about John James Audubon shooting staggering numbers of birds just for the ``sport'' of it, hits a darker note—as does ``Just Like Me and You,'' about a funeral organized for a slave child by a tenderhearted Methodist lady. The tale ends with a powerful image of Western cultural ignorance, yet Hersey softens the blow by acknowledging the good intentions of the misguided woman. Other standouts include the ruefully comic ``The Two Lives of Consuela Castanon,'' about the brief fling of an obese young woman, and ``Fantas Fest,'' which captures the ambivalent mix of excitement and fear, love and bemusement, that fills a woman who's about to meet the grown child she gave up for adoption. At his finest, Hersey creates characters and situations that linger in the mind like real memories. A bittersweet, resonant ending, then, to an extraordinary career.