The prisoner pear : stories from the lake /

Imagination takes flight in these 12 stories set in Lake Oswego, an affluent suburb of Portland, Oregon. Rust begins each story with a snippet from the local newspaper's police blotter, from which spins a tale--sometimes edging on the surreal. A report of food thrown at a garage door spawns Vital Organs, in which a woman's kidneys simply disappear, affecting her only with profound sadness; media attention disturbs her neighbors, and canned kidney beans are thrown at her garage door before she finds that her body emptied for a reason. In Rich Girls, a report of a fire started in the high-school boys' bathroom is embedded in the tale of a man who takes part in increasingly intrusive medical research studies to get extra money for his wife and daughters. A report of a vicious cat near a resident's back porch starts Moon over Water, in which the full moon becomes frozen over Portland (and nowhere else), leading to fertile animals, fast-growing plants, and obese people. Rust's prose is crisp and precise. --Michele Leber Copyright 2006 Booklist

In 12 efficient, accomplished stories inspired by snippets from the Lake Oswego, Ore., police blotter, Rust takes a magnifying glass to affluent suburban life in the Pacific Northwest. In the title story, a young UPS manager looks for signs that he should propose to his rich girlfriend while battling a case of cold feet and class anxiety. A blotter item about two high school girls thought to be prostitutes (in fact, they're just standing on a corner, waiting for a cab) blossoms into a perceptive and moving story about best friends united-and ultimately divided-by their severe eating disorders. Economics drive a young father to enroll himself in risky medical experiments in "Rich Girls"; in "Of All the Insatiable Human Urges," a 36-year-old woman discovers she's pregnant shortly after learning that her 49-year-old husband is dying of prostate cancer; and in "Moon over Water," an unnatural sequence of full moons wreaks havoc in the Portland area. Solid, believable characters rendered in careful, deliberate prose move against a convincing landscape of lakeside cottages and sprawling McMansions, grocery store aisles and shopping malls, bedrooms and doctors' offices. This is a fine portrait of privileged lives, in all their mundanity and weirdness. (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved