SOMETHING IS OUT THERE

In his latest collection, Bausch (Peace, 2008, etc.) occasionally allows his stylistic command to be undermined by symbolic heavy-handedness.

Character is key for this veteran author of novels and short fiction. His protagonists are neither good nor bad but, as one of the better stories here puts it, “honest in [a] self-deluding way.” That story is “Byron the Lyron,” about a man whose deepest love is for his sickly, strong-willed, 84-year-old mother Georgia, whose impending death is far more devastating to him than to her. Compounding the devastation is Byron’s breakup with his boyfriend, who continues to sustain a relationship with Georgia; not until Byron is free of both can he come into his own. Bausch offers no heroes or villains here, just lives that in their essence resemble the ancient buildings in Rome (where Byron has moved), “with their long history, their beauty and complication, their tragedy and triumph, their songs and their sorrow.” Two stories (“Son and Heir,” “Something Is Out There”) make use of a power outage to throw characters into thematic darkness; another (“One Hour in the History of Love”) employs a cafe table that proves impossible to steady as a metaphor for the couples sitting at it. In the title piece, a woman on the verge of upending her family’s life finds it instead upended by circumstances beyond her control, though she comes to see them as connected: “[T]his day’s badness was the beginning of something more, an unfolding.” Love is a predominant concern throughout this collection, which raises the metaphysical ante with the closing story, “Sixty-five Million Years,” in which a priest finds his spiritual torpor shaken by the doubts of a troubled, precocious young stranger.

Plenty here for Bausch fans to admire, but no startling breakthrough to attract a wider readership.