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THE ANGEL ON THE ROOF: The Stories of Russell Banks
By Russell Banks
HarperCollins, 506 pages, $27.50
Some strong novelists falter with the short story, requiring more space and sweep to create their characters, but Russell Banks also excels at short fiction. Banks, author of the novels “Continental Drift” and “Cloudsplitter,” writes short stories that rarely feel incomplete. The cohesiveness in this collection comes in part from the similar themes: unreliable husbands and fathers, smart but jaded women like Irene, a character in “Plains of Abraham” who “had a loose, large face and no restrictions on distorting it to imitate fools and stupid people.”