Though they often take place in California, there's an almost Eastern European bite to Gina Berriault's stories, a substantiality. Indeed, in this, her seventh book, Berriault pours out a samovar of ideas and plots -- so refreshing in our era of thin fiction. In "Lives of the Saints," for instance, an abandoned son visits each of his father's famous religious sculptures, to find why he chose them over him. In "Death of a Lesser Man," a woman clouded in Camus ("she wanted only to read") is jolted out of the abstract when her husband takes ill. "With both hands she gripped his wrist," Berriault writes, "wailing his name into his large, gentle hand that was soothing and calming her into waking."

One thinks of Chekhov or Kundera, but also Margaret Atwood, and maybe George Eliot in sandals (it's that recurring Bay Area tonality). Andre Dubus and Richard Yates, to namedrop further, think Berriault is first-rate. "One of the finest writers alive," gushes Yates. But you wouldn't think so reading the title story to "Women in Their Beds," one of the weaker efforts in the collection (too self-conscious). Instead, try "Who Is It Can Tell Me Who I Am," a sort of leftist Ray Bradbury tale about a librarian, a homeless man, and a Ruben Dario poem: fine and chilling.

There are misses, but less from lack of imagination than cloddish wordplay. A woman has a voice like "green bass," for instance (huh?). You sometimes wish Berriault would buff up her prose a bit more, to match the sheen of her ideas. On the other hand, that unwitting Slavic tone continues to save the day. (One story is even called, a la Gogol, "The Overcoat"). Read Berriault if only for her great, jolting first sentences; clearly, she's done time in the Gregor-Samsa-woke-up-one-day Short Story Slammer. Here's a gem: "When Milo Jukovich was nineteen he introduced himself to his father." Or this: "It was a family of three sons and four daughters, every one of whom had a great arched nose." Or this: "So the old woman got herself a yellow apple today." Swish! A very good collection.

--Katherine Whittamore