[A North American Education, a] collection of Clark Blaise's fiction, is most impressive, if at times not fully satisfying. Both these facts arise from the use Blaise makes of an autobiographical voice, the ability, which is his particular talent, of creating the illusion that the reader is the confidant of an author relating anecdotes of an intimate and revealing nature. This sense that one is dealing with autobiographical fiction is unavoidable; it comes from the feel of the stories, it is insisted upon on the dust jacket, it is mused upon by one of Blaise's narrators:

I used to write miniature novels, vividly imagined, set anywhere my imagination moved me. Then something slipped. I started writing of myself and these vivid moments in a confusing flux.

Within his stories Blaise's protagonists experience just such moments in just such flux, and their experiences are shared by the reader as...