CELESTIAL OMNIBUS CL
A Celestial Omnibus: Short Fiction on Faith, unlike  most anthologies of fiction with religious themes, has a healthy  respect both for doubt and belief. The title story, by E. M. Forster,  is a fable about the use and abuse of literature as a means of  salvation. Forster emphatically rejects the idea that literature can  save us and, instead, offers an understanding of stories as  tabernacles, where the reader meets strange characters who quickly  become familiar to her and cause her spirit to experience a unique,  transcendent joy. That's certainly true of the stories in this  collection, which include "Pigeon Feathers," by John Updike;  "A Father's Story," by Andre Dubus; "Cathedral,"  by Raymond Carver; and a haunting meditation called "On  Mortality," by Maxine Hong Kingston. Although the religious  sensibilities of these stories are pretty sophisticated, more than a  few of them feature children as protagonists, which makesA  Celestial Omnibusespecially appropriate for families who like to  read together or for smart junior high school students who are hungry  for some meaty late-night reading.