Leonard Michaels’s reputation may not be what it once was (his writing was a mainstay in The New Yorker and The Partisan Review), but we’re thinking this posthumous story collection will win him a whole school of new readers. Set mostly in the unvarnished New York of the seventies, the stories revolve around issues of sex, money, and the frail ties that bind people together—think John Cheever, with more existential issues.
The Collected Stories
By Leonard Michaels; Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $26.