FAR-FLUNG

Three stories at the book's end—all concerning the same Indiana family but all of whose characters are given long leash to act independently, non-conformingly, movingly—and the story ``Not the Point'' (a mother, having lost one teenage son to suicide, is anxious about her remaining teenage son's behavior) give notice that Cameron is able to write with emotional directness when he wants to. But he wants to so rarely here. Three-quarters of the stories are annoyingly flyweight, especially when they try to be hip-funny: ``Just Relax,'' ``The Cafe Hysteria,'' ``The Secret Dog,'' ``The Near Future.'' Three stories try for more seriousness, involving emotional rejection: ``What?'' and ``Slowly'' and ``The Meeting and Greeting Area''; these are stories, though, that seem so self-conscious about their homosexual protagonists that they labor beneath a smog of transposition and eagerness-to-please, leaving out all the fictional palpability of place and speech. A weak, puppy-ish, unsatisfying collection.