Amazon.com (ISBN 0670894834, Hardcover)

The characters in David Ebershoff's spare, acid-etched stories are the loners holding down bar stools in the afternoon, the trolls that pretty gay boys learn how to avoid, men on whom fortune never smiled, or smiled only once, so briefly and dazzlingly, that they forever look backward. Often, though, their defining moment is not a happy memory. The protagonist of "The Dress" recounts being trapped in a woman's dress at the age of ten, having knotted the sash too tightly around his naked waist, an incident that cost him his father's love. Roland Dott, the mentally unstable main character of the title story, was rejected by his high school idol after delivering a bathroom blowjob, and consoles himself for forty years with an exaggerated sense of self worth. Much of the poignancy of Ebershoff's vision comes from his positioning of his characters in a hostile and uncomprehending world, rather than in a gay universe of cocktail parties, stylish hair, and flippant rejoinders. These are unconsoling stories, well crafted and hard to forget. --Regina Marler