Empire'' and ''Fireworks,'' though told in the third person, attain intimacy and intensity by being reflected tightly, exclusively through a single consciousness in each story. He because all the voices are male. All approximately 25 to 40 years old. Predictably, they speak about gaining, losing or holding on to manhood. Sex, violence, crime and sports are usual points of reference.
Women are lovers, mothers, daughters.
And though female characters may be strong, aggressive, even in charge, their appearance signals not so much the existence of a feminine world and the author's curiosity about it, but an opportunity to observe how women affect men, how they fit into a man's world. But not exactly. When women in these stories cross over into traditionally male preserves, their intrusion also transforms. In ''Communist'' a mother follows her son and her lover to a lake covered by a raft of thousands of snow geese. What might be a rite of bonding, a boy's initiation into the mysteries of blood sports, loses its edge as the mother goes from alienated spectator to arbiter of hunting etiquette.