<DIV>The ten stories in Robert Anderson's debut collection are an inventive and daring foray into the world of the absurd. Leading us across a wide range of settings, from rural Texas to 1930s Spain to a Gulf War field hospital, Anderson shifts our view of the world to incorporate a set of characters slightly off-center and intriguing in their eccentricity. As we are tossed from one bizarre circumstance to the next, Anderson's sophisticated, sometimes playful prose combines the concrete with the surreal to convince us that we know very little about the world we complacently inhabit. <br></div>