Wonderful Tricks: Stories

In a culture seemingly addicted to volume as a thing of value, Grefory Spatz's stories prove refreshing for their quiet moving style. Indeed, even authors of so-called family dramas, such as the Corrections, feel the need to ramp up the decibels to a point that the characters and story vanish in sea of details and noise. An able writer and the head of the MFA program at Eastern Washington University, Spatz remains in the school of able authors such as Richard Russo. Readers who take pleasure in watching character go through lives rather than melodramas are sure to take great pleasure in this fine little work.