There are few writers whose storytelling can be enchanting and lyrical regardless of genre. Tobias Wolff may be best known for his memoir, This Boy’s Life, but his ability to plumb human emotion and suss out the details of daily life make him a master of the short story. Our Story Begins (Vintage, $15.95) gathers ten new works together with a broad swath of his beloved classics. These tales operate with an internal logic that is at once precise and all encompassing. Wolff’s characters are the perfect summertime treat (no story is longer than twenty pages) to be savored and enjoyed in short bursts or over a long afternoon.
Cynthia Ozick is a meticulous writer, and her latest fiction is the bounty of a long life of careful reading, deep thought, natural wit, and a relish of all things human, from foibles to manners to graver questions of history, religion, and language. All this—and more—figures in Dictation: A Quartet (Mariner, $13.95) of novellas. Different from one another in tone and subject, these stories range from a tour de force of historic fiction, premised on a friendship between the assistants to Henry James and Joseph Conrad; to a New York theatre’s revival of a Yiddish play and an old man’s rage; to a marriage of mercy between a pregnant maid and a visiting journalist in Mussolini’s Italy; to a family mystery involving a universal language to rival Esperanto.
