All Around Atlantis

Deborah Eisenberg's deeply etched and mysterious stories focus on individuals grappling with the dislocations, ironies, and compromises levied by ordinary reality and the vivid, troubling worlds her characters inhabit. In 'The Girl Who Left Her Sock on the Floor, ' a messenger arrives to conduct a boarding school girl into an utterly unexpected future; in 'Across the Lake, ' a well-meaning college student on summer vacation finds that he is a voyeur -- and possibly worse -- at a guerrilla war he almost failed to notice; in 'Mermaids, ' some suburban schoolchildren try to navigate through the 'acceptable level' of adult pollution around them; in 'Someone to Talk To, ' an aging not-quite prodigy finds himself giving a concert in a banana republic. In lyrical and gleaming prose, Eisenberg pries open daily life to explore the hidden mechanisms of human behavior.