You're So Beautiful/Normal

...Nevai writes more from the inside of her characters' psyches, but covers ground similar to FitzGerald's...

...a most readable book...

...However, most of the characters in both of these collections would be happy, I think, simply to find a way to get beyond the wounds of infidelity, loneliness, and estrangement...

...A pervasive anxiety is palpable even among the youngest...

...In "Belief," a desperate young girl, abandoned at a Methodist camp by her parents, repeatedly slashes herself with a Swiss Army knife in an attempt to find control in her life...

...Not surprisingly, these fragile teen-agers are among the most disturbing and combustible of all these characters...

...And at times many of the characters conjured up by these two writers seem silly or simply maddening, plagued and inevitably betrayed by their own doubts...

...one of Nevai s more vital creations, a coarse and not altogether likable New Jersey man who panics whenever he approaches the Holland Tunnel on his commute into New York City: I put my head between my legs, close my eyes, hold tight to my Saint Christopher medal...

...The bus is going downhill, down, down, and when the sound changes, no traffic noise, just wheels, I know we're in the tunnel...

...This is it, I'm thinking, this is the end...

...Iost of Eik'i n Fit,GcraId's and Lucia Nevai's characters are fueled by a quirky sense of their own precariousness...

...She is at her best within the tormented yet mundane world of suburban teen-agers...

...Overwhelmed by the complexities of youth, the story's principal character gorges herself with sweets, stuffs herself with cookies in the park, and lugs home pillowcases filled with chocolates for family and friends...

...Some of these families have managed to stay intact and are battling a nagging uneasiness...

...Jacqueline Dowdell iddle-class America can be ,i peculiar place...

...Just get me over, I'm pray ing, I probably say it two thousand times...

...In "Missy," pinksmocked teen-agers work halfheartedly at a shopping center candy store (formerly the automotive department of Sears...

...As Gus 's travail suggests, there is a dark and disturbing side to our everyday preoccupations...

...lively, full of concrete details...

...FitzGerald, for example, takes on incest in her collection's poignant title story, where Sydney, left alone by her parents for two months, gets through high school biology and drill-team practice, and gets away from the lecherous attention of a divorced, middle-aged man, only to return home terrified that her college-aged brother will visit on weekends and mo.lest her while she's sleeping...

...l l r C:crtlr all- He uild i k "Forceful and compelling...

...Five-year-old Jill, the adhesive holding together a failing marriage in Nevai's "Thanksgiving with Dorrie & Heck," belts out a campy rendition of a Southern ditty to salvage her family's performance (and, perhaps, her parents' marriage) in a talent show...

...Green death is closing in around me...

...With honesty and a little abandon, a few do, and take the edge off their anger, disappointment, and regret...

...Other stories in these two collections can be too scant...

...The jolts and trepidations of adolescent life are well canvassed...

...Beyond the monotony of split-level homes and overpasses, of r rlca.iin, practice and the Baby Gap, many Americans struggle, for the most part silently, with the tenuousness of their lives...

...Some are plain puzzling...

...others, disconnected, are still shocked by loss, looking to control or repair what's left...

...FitzGerald's reverence for some of her characters limits her weaker stories, and M Camnrouuleaf 38 •rjPtemher 12, 1997 she neglects too much of life's simple absurdity and spectacle...

...Los Angeles Times "Especially powerful - and poignant:' -comnmonweul "Thought-pre~~ czking....1r~rlispcr~snl~l...

...Both collections present those moments in some fine, haunting stories...

...These are people who are seemingly held hostage to their vulnerabilities (and very real fears), and almost literally held captive in shopping malls, grocery store checkout lines, wedding receptions, their own homes, and even the Holland Tunnel...

...Still, both Nevai and FitzGerald more often treat these fictional lives with patience, good will, and compassion, so that, in the best stories here, we want to as well...

...Nevai's "Monsieur A11e" places us with a permissive Upper West Side couple who, after a fracas involving floury chicken parts, anxiously await a visit from a child-abuse investigator...

...Reading the stories in these two first collections is like taking a series of detours on a trip across the landscape of American anxiety...

...Over and over, I'm saying, just get me over, Saint Christopher...

...The mildness and humor of family life-moments of predictability, restless ness, and doubt among siblings, parents and their children, couples, and neighbors-infuse many of the stories...

...mo<ic, 0 A PENGUIN BOOK HARVARD DIVINITY S C H Q D L Theological education in an ecumenical setting where Roman Catholic students are the largest group in the student body  Special faculty resources include the Stillman Professor of Roman Catholic Theological Studies & the Counselor for Roman Catholic students  Rigorous academic & practical preparation for lay & scholarly ministries, enriched by the resources of the Boston Theological Institute Jacqueline Dowdell, formerly Common weal's production editor, is a graduate student in the English department at Cornell University...

...In "Release," an even more effective story, an angry and rebellious young woman, a persistent runaway, is reunited with her bewildered parents in a psychiatric ward...

...Then there's Gus Angellini...

...The bum in back is smoking a cigarette...

...For information on admissions as financial aid: Admissions Office, Harvard Divinity School, 45 Francis Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138  (617) 495-5796 Commonweal 39 September 12, 1997...

...The smell of exhaust is seep ing in underneath somewhere...

...In "Chicken Train," " one of FitzGerald's lighter pieces, a ripening peach becomes a lifeline to youth for a forty-one-year-old husband and father as he reflects on impending middle age before an annual neighborhexxi barbecue...

...The liveliest stories in y,,,,'rae So Beautiful and Normal capture a frantic energy and trace a shaky path over the day-to-day lives of people blessed with pk'lntvztfcomfnrts, rut little security...

...this mix of uncertainty and good fortune captures both the self-in dulgent and endearing sides of family life...

...All these parents contend with lukewarm marriages, willful teen-agers, and slack households...

...C THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER HIS HOLINESS John Paul 11 awl the History of Our Time CARL BERNSTEIN and MARCO POLITI "Effccrivc and compelling...r-iveling...absorbing...

...her loping prose expertly tracks the myriad fears and anguish of adolescence...

...And in FitLGerald's "Zoo Bus," persnickety Elise, an eighty-year-old mother who at once craves and distrusts her daughter's attention, takes a taxi downtown clutching an unopened can of blueberries, desperate to make peace with her daughter...

...In doing so, and much to our delight, they find room in their lives for things that have been lost or misplaced...