Girl Boy Etc. — Michael Weinreb

With humor, audacity and cunning, Michael Weinreb delves into the inner lives of young, single men as they weather the uncertainties of modern relationships, and comes up with observations so sly, in prose so disarming and precise, that girls and boys alike will find themselves nodding, laughing and cringing all at once.

These are men floundering in love, stuck in their heads and making all the wrong choices for all the right reasons. There is Jonathan of "All I Know About It," whose dizzying love affair crashes and burns, leaving him sobbing over the price of premium at a Texaco station; Seth Hall, the motivational speaker in "What I Would Tell Her," who spends his days rousing roomfuls of shoe-store owners, but can never summon the courage to dial that last digit when he picks up the phone to tell Rachael -- "with an extra a for emphasis" -- that he is in love with her; and Alex Rosen, the hapless protagonist of "Pictures of My Family," who addresses his own mother as "Hey, you."

In the title story, we meet up with Alex again, a little older and maybe slightly wiser, as he tries to make it to the next level -- in life, love, work, whatever -- yet finds himself unable to shake old habits and, while swept up in the hedonistic pleasures of Las Vegas, makes a pass at his friend's self-absorbed girl of the moment.