<DIV><P><I>Nine Inches</I>, Tom Perrotta’s first true collection, features ten stories—some sharp and funny, some mordant and surprising, and a few intense and disturbing. Whether he’s dropping into the lives of two teachers—and their love lost and found—in “Nine Inches”, documenting the unraveling of a dad at a Little League game in “The Smile on Happy Chang’s Face”, or gently marking the points of connection between an old woman and a benched high school football player in “Senior Season”, Perrotta writes with a sure sense of his characters and their secret longings.<P><I>Nine Inches</I> contains an elegant collection of short fiction: stories that are as assured in their depictions of characters young and old, established and unsure, as any written today. <P> </DIV>