by Jody Lisberger.

Fleur-de Lis Press. 195 pages. $13.

BY SAM COALE
Special to the Journal

So many of the characters in these perceptive and well-honed tales collide and quarrel with one another as if enduring some lifelong competition. They spar and snap, pick at one another’s wounds and emotional scabs, jockey for position, trying to fathom “how you balance between loving a person . . . and knowing your own life might be heading in a different direction.”

Lisberger has taught at Brown, Harvard, Holy Cross and Tufts, and now in the Women’s Studies Program at URI, specializing in feminist theory and postcolonial literature. In her stories, she reveals a sharp eye for the daily detritus and debacles of damaged men and women, adolescents in the paroxysms of lust and terror, people who have been divorced and remarried and watch out for every possible slight or intimation of neglect, and ordinary folks who want to be safe, adventurous, reassured and revered.

For Marcie, fishing with David becomes a metaphor for killing in general. Young Annabel, whose father is gay, leaps off bridges to impress her friends and meet athletic Billy’s expectations, while timid Kate lurks on the sidelines and may be looking at Annabel’s curves more than at Billy’s muscles. A masseuse takes in her former lover, only to find that he’s carrying on with her friend next door. One teenage boy whips another with a stick when he fails to have sex with the girl they’ve brought to a remote field. Carrie, working with women in Bolivia, is angry when her boyfriend flies in and suggests, “Be careful how you meddle. Be careful about being too strong. How odd to feel judged by him.” Sheila, on the verge of divorce, is stunned by her teenage daughter’s sensual, all-knowing performance as an adulteress in Arthur Miler’s The Crucible.

Lisberger takes her all-too-human characters’ emotional temperatures as they pounce on some comment or action that becomes the surrogate for buried disappointment, incipient anger, elusive frustrations, and old wrongs. Moments of sudden exhilaration erupt and all too quickly tumble into moments of regret and smoldering rage.

Women tend to be neglected, fearful, desperate. Men tend to remain remote, bossy, boastful and obtuse. But Lisberger steers an even path through the thickets of their entangled bodies and spirits. They all share in “the illusion, the reassurance — you can put yourself together one layer at a time.”

Lisberger writes matter-of-fact prose, an almost purposely mundane style that’s drained of sentiment and passion, exacting and detailed, at times documentary and “freeze-dried.” But when she describes an arthritic old woman’s finger as “an hourglass of bone,” she’s right on target. And she knows her territory, as when she recognizes, “It isn’t each other they want, but want itself.”

I like more juice in prose, but Lisberger keeps you intrigued by how — and if — things will turn out. REMEMBER LOVE: Stories,

samcoale@cox.net