The first and last stories in this collection are brilliant. They are intellectually satisfying, funny, and emotionally wrenching. In them Englander manages to address issues and themes that have run through my life, and I suspect many Jewish and half-Jewish (that would be me) Americans born after WWII and the founding of Israel. What role does Judaism as a religion play in our lives? If we do not practice, are we still Jewish? How do we know what we would have done if caught in the horror that was the Holocaust? Who can we trust and how do we judge? It is a measure of Englander's talent that these tales could also be read by someone who does not share the same background and their power would not be diminished. If every story in this collection were as good as these two, this would be a five star book.

Unfortunately, although the pieces in between have their moments, they fail to reach the same level in terms of craft or emotional punch. Englander has still to find a strong balance between incorporating talmudic, magical and folkloric elements into his work in ways that do not feel forced. Too often the experimentation doesn't deepen the reader's experience of the emotional state of the characters, but distracts from it. Did we really need the naked rabbis in "Peep Show" to feel Ari/Alan's guilt over abandoning his usual homeward commute to dash into a Times Square dive? Nor is the choice to promote the central character of "The Reader" to the iconic "The Author" give universality and heft to it's look at aging, and the indiscriminate ability of time to destroy us without sympathy. I would have preferred a more particularized central character who would have elicited my sympathy for his plight rather than being pushed to see this small, uneventful tale as a discourse on the human condition.

Still, even when he doesn't completely succeed, Englander writes with grace, sharp observation and emotional heft. I have looked forward to this new collection since I picked up his first, "For the Relief of Unbearable Urges," on a whim when it was first published. I look forward to his next as well.