MOURNING DOVES

There's something all too familiar about these 19 stories by first-timer Troy, and it's not just because they all first appeared in The New Yorker. Spare and quirky, these tales of love and loss, of smart kids and stupid parents, could have been written by a number of recent writers, beginning with Ann Beattie. The most memorable pieces here are four set in Florida that have the ring of autobiography. Together, they detail, from a young girl's point of view, a family's hapless trek from Indiana, with a detour in Nashville for her brother's emergency appendectomy, and their arrival in Jacksonville, where they live above a topless bar. Intending to join relatives in the Keys, the family collapses when the father dies in a construction accident. ``Family'' remains an elusive concept throughout many of these often glib narratives. The title story features an odd group of widows who fall in and out of love rather quickly. Ill-fated romance flourishes—a bachelor in his 50s pines for the girl in the trailer next door. A divorcÇe decides to marry her prison pen-pal; another teenaged boy ponders the fragility of marriage, at his sister's wedding; an 18-year-old mother sets her sights on an illegal alien; a confused 13-year-old girl has the hots for a middle-aged biker, and another late-bloomer sees all romance as disaster. The fear of loneliness plagues all sorts of couples—from the adulterer who's separated from his wife to the middle-aged gay man who senses the end of his long relationship. Three stories set in Kansas focus on a waitress separated from her loser husband. Her 15-year-old metalhead son threatens to leap from a water tower, while she's having an affair with her boss. Love, however hapless, Troy suggests, is still worth it. These mobile homes all look alike, and the same C&W songs seem to be playing everywhere. More drab prole fiction.