[In the following review, Weber praises Dybek's The Coast of Chicago.]

Stuart Dybek could flip a coin and win a bet that it would land on its edge. In his second collection of stories, he gambles (usually successfully) that the paradoxical borders and margins of life are the most interesting places to locate his fiction. Some of these 14 stories are big and rich, long enough for a leisurely pace and pleasant reiterations of themes and motifs without running the least risk of seeming overstuffed or repetitious. The other stories, interleaved, are extremely short, ranging from a few paragraphs to a few pages. But these brief illuminations are no less effective, and they stand alone with a deft elegance that makes them far more than amusing little palate cleansers between courses. Crossing over to the lost territories of childhood is a recurring theme in The Coast of Chicago. Memories that are intensely dreamlike, as opposed to nostalgic, seem to drive many of Mr. Dybek's characters, whose thoughts circle and hover over old Chicago neighborhoods. One of the longest and most moving stories, "Nighthawks," has clearly been inspired by the eponymous Edward Hopper painting of a cafe and its middle-of-the-night denizens. Mr. Dybek names the night counterman Ray and imagines him trying to sleep during the day: "Perhaps it's something other than insomnia, to lie listening to children yelling as if they've recreated light; to try to dream, but succeed only in remembering." Laden but not burdened with significant imagery, this story exemplifies Mr. Dybek's persistence in examining the edge between wakefulness and dreaming, where memories lie coiled.