NOTHING BUT YOU

The first anthology of short fiction from The New Yorker to be published in 30 years, and the first to be assembled around a theme, though, as editor Angell notes in his introduction, the organizing idea proved to be more expansive and provocative than he had anticipated. He discovered that tales he had recollected as being about love spoke about it only glancingly, but nonetheless said necessary things about its disruptions and despairs. Here, he's assembled an appropriately eclectic mix of voices and generations. There are precise, unblinking tales of love gone wrong by John O' Hara (``How Old, How Young''); John Cheever (``Marito in CittÖ,'' a terse, devastating portrait of an adulterer); Jean Rhys (``Goodbye Marcus, Goodbye Rose''); and Vladimir Nabokov (``The Circle''); fine work by Alice Munro and Mavis Gallant (perhaps the two best living short story writers); typically bleak, idiosyncratic stories by Raymond Carver (``Blackbird Pie'') and Mary Robison (``Yours''), as well as some impressive work by much younger writers, including Mary Gaitskill (``The Nice Restaurant,'' one of her best stories), Mary Grimm (``We''), and Alice Elliot Dark (``In the Gloaming''). A nicely varied assembly of accomplished tales, and a reminder of the perception and skill possessed by several generations of The New Yorker's fiction editors.