THE CHILDREN IN THE WOODS

Unlike novelists who use the short-story as a sketchpad for longer works, or as a completely different formal challenge, Busch tends to freeze-dry his novels into stories' smaller spaces, keeping the same domestic point of view and eschewing too-sharp drama. Some of the 23 pieces here have been already collected in Domestic Particulars (1976) and Absent Friends (1989), but a sense of dÇjÖ vu hangs over even the new ones. There is, repetitiously, a zhlubby male protagonist—sometimes a writer or a lawyer or someone in the ``caring professions'' or in the service sector—who lives in upstate New York and is gifted against type with the love of a strong woman. There are often young boys' eager but appalled recollections of their parents' limited marriages. And always there is a realism that depends more on homey but facile tone than on anything inconveniently singular (or unlikable) about a character (from ``Ralph the Duck'': ``In bed and warm again, noting the red digital numbers [5:29] and certain that I wouldn't sleep, I didn't. I read a book about men who kill each other for pay or for their honor. I forget which, and so did they''). Busch never casts a character, no matter how hangdog (and these are really joyless Joes and Josies), so far adrift that he or she can't be called back for a poignant hug. This fondness for their foibles deteriorates, out of habit, into teddy-bear fables about pain.