FRUIT OF THE MONTH by Abby...

FRUIT OF THE MONTH by Abby Frucht (Graywolf: $9.95). The characters and situations in this prize-winning collection of short stories--educated, middle-class people falling in and out of relationships--have been examined by many other contemporary writers, but Frucht’s skillful use of language sets her work apart. The forlorn husband in “Peace and Passivity” imagines that his political-activist wife and her friend will run away together to Central America: “They will not make love of course. They will love only the people of El Salvador and they will carry this love between them like a sacrificial animal.” In “Engagements,” a woman describes trying to get a simple answer from her lawyer husband as “like ordering tea in a restaurant and getting a little ceramic pot filled with steamy water and a teacup with a Lipton tea bag inside. You never quite get what you’re after.” What these characters do is less interesting than the way Frucht describes them doing it.