Women in their beds

Half the women in the world are right now in bed, theirs or somebody else's, whether it's night or day, whether they want to be or not...." In the title story of Gina Berriault's latest collection, an unsure young actress watches as wrenching changes take place, row upon row, bed upon bed, in the women's ward of a hospital where she fills in as a social worker. Finding there both kindness and harsh fate, she also discovers a reflection of her own life. Nine new stories are included in this collection of thirty-five. All are such models of economy that they seem almost telepathic. Berriault employs her vital sensibility - sometimes subtly ironic and sometimes achingly raw - to touch on the inevitability of suffering and the nature of individuality, daring to see into the essence of our predicaments. What moves us? What dictates our behavior? What alters us? These stories illustrate Berriault's depth of emotional understanding: the tragic loss of innocence in "The Stone Boy," where nine-year-old Arnold accidentally kills his brother with a shotgun; the pointed wit in "God and the Article Writer" where a man is first demeaned and then elated by his submission to the people he interviews.