FICTION

ALWAYS HOME AND OTHER STORIES by David Ely (Donald I. Fine: $18.95; 230 pp.). Praises be! A short story writer who understands what a short story isn’t --not a sketch, nor a vignette, but that most complex of literary forms, a story , short in length, in which something --physically, emotionally or intellectually--does, indeed, happen! In David Ely’s title story, “Always Home,” the lonely wife of a man frequently on the road finds herself subtly being taken over by the sophisticated, high-tech home-security system designed to protect her. Or, for poignancy, there’s “Old Flame,” in which the glitzy, successful wife of an even more successful, hard-driving husband, bumps into the dowdy man who had been an early love. They have so little in common now, but as they reminisce over lunch, the reader realizes how rich the relationship between them must have been. And then, tattered coat and all, he disappears back into the crowd. It’s a rich collection that explores the bizarre, the ironic and the universal need for love.