Ether

In "e;Leavers' Events,"e; a teenage girl awaits exam results and has a sexual encounter with a teacher that she hopes will define her. In "e;Sunday's Child,"e; a middle-aged actress evicts a homeless woman from her garden, which precipitates a crisis of conscience. In "e;The Bachelor's Table,"e; a lawyer takes advantage of an accounting mistake and sets in motion a sequence of events that force him to evaluate his actions. In the title story, "e;Ether,"e; a blocked writer plagiarizes his own life with devastating consequences.All the characters in Evgenia Citkowitz's first collection of short fiction are connected by the quest for identity. Some are poised at a crossroads, while others teeter on the edge of a moral precipice. The stories are startlingly original, haunting, and often funny. From a hamster cage in Los Angeles to the bowels of the great houses of London and Long Island, Citkowitz depicts her characters' frailties and humanity with a mordant humor and tenderness that never diminish their complexity.