THE COMPLEXITIES OF INTIMACY

A handful of loosely linked stories (one long enough to be a novella) displays a smart variety of family dysfunction: Caponegro’s third collection (The Star Café, 1990, etc.) sustains her reputation as a writer with a disturbing, complex vision.

In the opener, “The Daughter’s Lamentation,” a young woman has difficulty understanding her widowed architect father’s attitude toward the family’s summer house on the Finger Lakes; he has now retired there, with her to care for him while her years of ballet training come to naught. But the image of pointe shoes in the freezer seems normal compared to details that emerge in subsequent stories: in “The Father’s Blessing,” for instance, a doddering priest conducts a wedding ceremony, then tries to persuade the newlyweds to break away from their bedroom activities long enough to be measured for coffins. That gaffe pales, however, next to the priest’s role in the family crisis that results when the couple later decide on a home birth for their firstborn: he is drawn into the birthing room by the sight of the mother’s milk-engorged breast, which he has observed through the keyhole. “Epilogue of the Progeny” offers the possibility of children selecting their parents, based on the sales pitches they’re given, then being handed the option weekly to change their minds or consider better offers, a prospect that fills the child-narrator with despair. But the terrible secret harbored by Tom’s sister Nora in the longest piece, “The Son’s Burden,” may be the most unsettling detail of all. In a twist worthy of Will Self, Nora reveals her shame at the end of a grueling New Year’s Eve ritual in which Tom is expected to produce a device that his invention-obsessed, domineering father won’t belittle.

Demanding and grim, these tales do provide stimulation—but through analytical channels more than emotional, leaving plenty of distance for contemplating intimacy’s exigencies.