David Huddle's autobiographical short stories use memory and imagination to explore his past in order to understand himself, those he loves, and the ways they live. Three of his four collections employ story sequences in which the same characters -- Reed Bryant in Only the Little Bone (1986), Billy Hyatt and Frank Berry in The High Spirits (1989), and, most recently, Eugene Riggins and thirteen-year-old Angela in Intimates (1993) -- face continuing personal, social, and moral dilemmas. Written in either first- or third-person point of view, these stories are told by articulate and interesting narrators. With passionate urgency Huddle writes stories that are necessary and meaningful.

Huddle is also a talented, prizewinning poet whose three books of lyrical and narrative sequences also explore autobiographical reminiscence, and he is a provocative critic whose essays have appeared in such publications as the New York Times Magazine and in a collection, The Writing Habit...