It is a treat to see ten of Laurie Clancy’s short stories collected in this volume, his third. Given their quality, it is not surprising that seven of them have already been published in magazines and anthologies. But to read them together is to see their interdependence, their thematic patterns. All deal with male experience, beginning with that of the fourteen-year-old Leo, on the brink of sexual knowledge; and moving on to stories of middle-aged men contemplating the emptiness of their lives. The collection concludes with two stories about death, one from cancer, one from AIDS.