BOOKS: FLOUNDERING

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At first perusal Thomas Beller's debut short-story collection, Seduction Theory (Norton; 205 pages; $21), appears as though it might be the chic literary equivalent of the TV comedy Friends. Beller, 30, is the co-founder of a talked-about Manhattan fiction journal, Open City, and the characters who people his 10 witty stories are plucked straight from a hyperexposed world of young, well-bred New Yorkers hopelessly flustered by attraction, ever fearful of love.

Beller's great accomplishment, however, is that he has managed to weave a series of touching and exceptionally memorable tales from this familiar milieu. All in all, Beller's characters are an indecisive lot who pursue desire with the sort of tremulousness that almost always ensures their solitude. In The Hot Dog War a young man who fixates on a beautiful woman he meets on the street cannot help bringing his best friend along on their first and only date. In Nondestructive Testing a former divinity-school student turned office temp is entranced by a comely receptionist until she makes the bold first move of offering him some chocolates.

Interspersed with these vignettes of urban romance are a few stories that provide a psychological history for Beller's characters. These pieces trace the young adulthood of Alex Fader, a fatherless only child who tries hard to suppress his love for an often elusive mother. Ultimately, though, Alex forges an enviable closeness with her, and that leaves the reader with hope for all the floundering, grownup versions of him in this spirited collection.