TELL ME

A retrospective of three collections from prolific New Yorker contributor Robison (Why Did I Ever, 2001, etc.). Robison’s stories always have the rare intimacy of confession, as though after each subtle, blunt detail she expects to be assigned a reasonable penance. Four new pieces accompany 26 tales from the previous volumes: Days (1979), Believe Them (1988), and An Amateur’s Guide to the Night (1990). The award-winners here include “Coach,” about a small-town football coach who staggers through an afternoon of domestic inebriation; “I Get By,” about a woman who’s lost her husband to a somewhat mysterious flying accident but takes solace in the impression made by his replacement at the local high school; “Pretty Ice,” in which the visit of a fiancée after a period of separation in may be too much for a woman forced to bring her mother along to meet the potential new man of the family; and the odd “Happy Boy, Allen,” about a young man visiting a drunk and probably disturbed aunt to discuss the matter of his widower father taking a new wife—and leaving the question of who’s more disturbed, the aunt or the nephew. Robison is realism in the form of narrative non sequitur, but what is gained by strategic anti-reliance on plot is, in the lesser efforts, lost to an over-reliance on the emotional pyrotechnics of death, either random or self-inflicted.

Still, good to see an important voice back in print.