NO MISSING PARTS

A collection of short stories, some more successful than others, but whether they are about “real” princesses depends on your definition. Canadian writer Carter seems to define a real princess as a woman who finds her own strength, but that isn’t always evident. The later stories, which take place in a time closer to our own, have a surer voice than the early ones, which suffer from pedestrian language, faux-historical settings, and not much plotting. Princess Sheila NaGeira of the first story is a legendary figure of Newfoundland; “One Mighty Kiss,” a poem, is about a kiss and a Métis boy. “Badlands” allows Sybil to find a place for herself away from her mother’s exhausting and constant pregnancies to teach in the Badlands of Canada. A WWII story about a brother’s faithless girlfriend finds an odd resonance in the writer’s own life; the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales is a turning point in the life of a teen born the day Diana was married and named for her. “The Piano Lesson,” which won a young-adult short-story award, is perhaps the strongest in the collection, with its delicate tracery of a music teacher with AIDS, a girl with a new love that isn’t music. Easy enough to read but without much staying power. (Short stories. YA)