"Couples," and the changing nature of two people coupling, is the running theme of the eight tales in
Sweet Embraceable You: Coffee-House Stories
. These Embraceable stories include the "fast-read" of
Coming Attractions
, a four-person one-act comedy that you and another couple could read out loud for a hoot after supper. For readers who have never had the chance to read an actual screenplay,
Duchess: Berlin 1928
reads so clearly, you can see, on the movie-screen in your head, everyones favorite fairy-tale heroine, the lost Grand Duchess Anastasia escaping lovers and villains in the streets of Berlin, two steps ahead of Sally Bowles in
Cabaret
. In fact, Duchess is a "film
noir
" story of a person refusing to couple when coupling means losing one's identity. The author, a true humanist, in these stories celebrates women who are coupled as mothers, wives, and friends. The son-mother-grandmother story, "Silent Mothers, Silent Sons," sews up a heart-breaking tale of how silence equals death, and, worse--before death--loneliness and isolation, because no one dares speak the secret that lies beneath nearly every family. All these stories are so vividly cinematic that the eight of them are like going into a Cineplex 8 and changing theaters to see all eight films for one admission. "The Barber of 18th and Castro" reads like Hitchcock, as the odd couple, a barber and a perhaps-serial-killer hustler, jostle suspensefully for power at the corner of 18th and Castro in San Francisco. "The Story Knife" tells the independent-film version of a handsome Catholic priest's reawakened sense of desire for a cabin-boy from Genoa; set on a cruise ship heading north to Alaska. In "Mrs. Dalloway," this coupling theme "triangulates" among the mother, the son, and the son's lover, with everyone refusing to surrender; yet the three arrive, through same-gender marriage, at a healing sense of family. Author Jack Fritscher, celebrates gay couples in this breathless autobiographical story, "Mrs. Dalloway Went That-A-Way." In "The Unseen Hand in the Lavender Light," a young boy grows up in a movie theater surrealistically powered by Hollywood images of coupling which make him finally explode. Fritscher is the best kind of author: one who disappears behind his well-developed characters, dialog, and plots. The diverse stories range from edgy to nostalgic, comic to romantic. The "voice" of the storyteller is pure entertainment without agenda. The style of the writing is lustrous. The author edits himself down to the polished bone, so that every word, every rhythm, every comma propels the feeling of the story. Sweet Embraceable You is recommended for travel, beach, and bedside reading.