This extraordinarily polished and sophisticated story collection investigates the unaccountable ways in which literature and life entwine. In "Three Seaside Tales" a woman at a resort imagines herself in a Chekhov story only to succumb to banal everydayness, and in "Island Time" a young bride inexorably merges with Emma Bovary. Brennan's fictions position their readers at the edge of the known world, opening onto vistas of both erotic promise and...