Moses supposes

by Ellen Currie

Few writers have been as enthusiastically hailed as was Ellen Currie when her short fiction first appeared in The New Yorker and other publications in the late 1950s. Twenty-five years later, her first novel, Available Light, appeared - and, as critics and readers were quick to assert, was well worth the wait. With Moses Supposes, Currie renews her reputation as a peerless chronicler of the free-floating malice and unintended comedy of domestic life. In the title story, a young newlywed's unexpected pregnancy makes her marriage suddenly, unbearably real. In "The Solution to Canned Peas," a couple try but fail to transcend the habits of mistrust. In "Slim Young Woman in No Distress," a mother braves her precocious son's wrath at her divorce. In "Exit Interview," an advertising executive contemplates the eclipse of his future by family tragedies he is helpless to prevent or to articulate. Rife with the ill luck, high drama, and poetry of the Irish, these dozen magical tales illuminate th