Noise from the Zoo and Other Stories — Janice Elliott

Collecting 23 stories written from 1958 to 1991, this volume by a prolific British novelist (L)r. Gruber's Daughter) is a true mixed bag. More about ideas than characters, these are highly cerebral tales that share a measured brevity, a leaning toward symbolic fantasy, and a sometimes overwhelming opacity. Whether set in the suburbs or in a timeless milieu (indeed, one is simply titled Fairy Tale), their pithy, fablelike structures are often self-enclosed and unyielding, a strain on the reader's involvement. In Divine, an odd family of three leads a rich, insular life in a Spanish village until a curious visitor appears; the story's framework is a meditation on the idealized life versus the pragmatic one. The title story concerns a middle-class man who decides to dig a hole next to his London home. Its existence becomes a cause c6lc%bre to the town-and leads to a moral we have not been primed enough to care about. Elliott is a thoughtful and imaginative writer, but these stories are distancing and rarely elicit empathy. (Oct.)