TWILIGHT

Six stories by Israeli writer Hareven, whose bone-white allegorical novels—The Miracle Hater, Prophet—have had nonmodern settings. Here, though, with the semi-exception of one dreamscape story, ``Twilight,'' contemporary Israel is the venue. Hareven writes in ``Loneliness'' and in ``Two Hours on the Road'' of sudden, surprising infatuations by middle-aged women; and in ``My Straw Chairs'' of loneliness triumphant. Translated by different hands (and, with the exception of Hillel Halkin's efforts, not especially well: studded with garbled idioms), the stories in general have a sharp, overly hurried tone—as though Hareven repeatedly lost patience with not coming quickly enough to the stories' points. One piece, the longest of them all, ``A Matter of Identity,'' about a Russian woman's wartime ``marriage'' to a Jew and the contemporary Israeli identity difficulties of their daughter when she seeks to emigrate, is pregnant with comedy and tragedy both—but frustrates as it loses many of its narrative opportunities by the pace of its headlong drive. Hareven's novels are short and haunting. Her stories are only short.