Plan B for the Middle Class Book

In his new collection of quirky, bittersweet stories, Carlson observes the men and women of the middle class, people who find themselves settling uneasily into lives they ...

Publishers Weekly

Carlson's winning new collection of short fiction issues from a sensibility set ever so slightly--and variously--askew. His range swings from a surreal monologue by a typical-sounding mother who apparently lives with her children on an aircraft carrier (``On the U.S.S. Fortitude '') to the emotionally disarming lead story ``Hartwell,'' a powerful depiction of the protagonist's self-humiliation as he seeks an end to his loneliness. The author's capacity for such variety is itself disarming; these 11 stories include as well the marginally amusing trifle ``Fort Bragg: How Subliminal Advertising Changed My Life,'' and a more conventional, taut tale of a father attempting to understand his unhappy son's death in Alaska (``Blazo''). It is as if Carlson ( The News of the World ) had expressly set himself a different goal for each tale--long, short, goofy or deadly serious. His expansive talent yields success in all, the best being the first and the last--the title story, about a man reviewing how the past has gotten him to his present, which leads him to reassess where to go from there. (Aug.)