WITHOUT A HERO by T. Coraghessan...

WITHOUT A HERO by T. Coraghessan Boyle (Penguin: $10.95; 238 pp.). Boyle introduces quirky elements into his stories that keep the reader off balance, as a Zen master keeps students from slipping into complacency. In “Filthy With Things,” a husband and wife despair at escaping mountains of flea market acquisitions, only to discover that the cure can be worse than the disease; a young father attends a PTA evening and discovers how far the social order has deteriorated in “Back in the Eocene.” With typical irony, the narrator of “Hopes Rise” remarks, “It might have been one of those golden, delicately lit spring mornings invested with all the warmth and urgency of the season, bees hovering, buds unfolding, the air soft and triumphant, but it wasn’t.”