THE PENITENT
by Isaac Bashevis Singer
Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 170 pages;
$13.95
THE BROTHERS SINGER by Clive Sinclair
Allison & Busby; 176 pages; $14.95
For most of this century, Isaac Bashevis Singer has spoken for a great and ancient minority: demons. In his fiction, they install themselves in mirrors to afflict women with vanity, render bridegrooms impotent on wedding nights, knock over Sabbath candles, spill poor men's dinners. "The demons," he says, "represent to me, in a sense, the ways of the world. Instead of saying this is the way things happen, I will say this is the way demons behave."
Evidently the imps are powerful...