The American Voice

Interesting Monsters: Fictions

Graywolf Press, 192 pp., $14 (paper)

The pieces in Aldo Alvarez's collection of "fictions" -- what writers call stories when they're feeling edgy -- try their damnedest to be playful and experimental and heartbreaking all at once, but they succeed only when the author tones down his metafictional exercises and focuses on his characters. Indeed, some of the "fictions" (including "Rog & Venus Become an Item") are not only tiresome but downright awful. You come away wishing the collection had just zeroed in on the recurring characters, Mark and Dean, a gay couple whose relationship is traced unchronologically throughout the book. In such stories, Alvarez's sometimes clunky and exuberant writing style usually works, because he allows his characters' stories and personalities to unfold organically. The two best stories, "Ephemera" and "Fixing a Shadow," still might be classified as experimental, but they succeed because the emotions at their cores are never overwhelmed by the author's showmanship.