HISTORY ON A PERSONAL NOTE

A second collection from Kirschenbaum (after Married Life, 1990): l6 stories, some of which have previously appeared in magazines like Outerbridge and the Indiana Review, that self- consciously chronicle female city-sophisticates' quests for identity and meaning. With one exception, the pieces here, though often bearing significant titles—``History on a Personal Note,'' ``The Zen of Driving,'' ``Get Married, Get Divorced, Find Jesus''—and equally weighty intentions, are shallow reflections of PC orthodoxy. The title story, as it moves from 1984 Germany—East and West—to rural Virginia, chronicles the failed romance of Lorraine, an American, with Peter, a German travel operative, and offers glib opinions on US politics and European history. Lorraine reappears when, back home in Virginia, she marries Doc, a stereotypical redneck whose crudeness serves (in ``Halfway to Farmville'' and ``Rural Delivery'') to illustrate the finer sensibilities of the urban narrator and the horrors of poor Lorraine's sojourn in the benighted South. ``Get Married, Get Divorced, Find Jesus'' describes the quirky relationship between Harold, who seems to know everything, and Nadia, who ``prefers to think things are as they are not''; and ``The Zen of Driving'' tells of a woman, unfaithful to her husband, who fantasizes about different cars while learning to drive in the city. ``White Houses'' reflects on a suburban childhood during the Kennedy years as a way of making a commentary on racial and religious prejudice. The best story here, meanwhile, is ``Courtship,'' which movingly describes the narrator's parents' ``wondrous love'' for each other while ruefully acknowledging ``that for me, such a love would never be enough.'' The kind of narrowly focused writing that declares sophistication but, in its way, is as parochial as any.