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The theme in this collection of stories concerns diverse relationships, such as the bond between a political activist and his cat and the situation of a man who finds himself surrounded by women who are shrinking

This excellent book of short stories by one of Canada's best-known authors glitters with vivid characterizations and examples of finely crafted story telling. Atwood's dramatic range is impressive. She opens with humorous, gently satirical stories about childhood and adolescence. Her title story skillfully portrays a woman's fear and grief as she begins to question her husband's faithfulness and her own perceptions, while other stories show the despair of characters who are trying to salvage lost relationships or to establish new ones. Many of these stories have the pacing and tone of spoken tales, stories told on front porches or repeated between mothers and daughters. This entertaining book by a gifted writer is highly recommended. Lucinda Ann Peck, Learning Design Assocs . , Gahanna, Ohio Copyright 1986 Cahners Business Information.

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``Conversations in our family were not about feelings,'' recalls the teenage narrator of ``Hurricane Hazel''about her breakup with a boyfriend who ``meant what is usually called absolutely nothing to me''in Atwood's (The Handmaid's Tale, etc.) second collection of shortfiction. Unfortunately, the author's arch cleverness and cool understatementanesthetize the impact of the stories' conversations and gloomy relationshipsbetween parents and children, husbands and wives, friends and lovers. Symbols abound and some, reminiscent of Atwood's ``edible woman'' cake in the book of the same title, are strained. In ``Uglypuss,'' the discordant lovers are political activists; at one point they plan to picket a sock company and dramatize the crucifixion, portraying Christ as a large knitted sock, in red and white stripes. But the collection is somewhat redeemed by the affecting title story, where an egga deceptively innocuous object that, according to the legend, ultimately marks as disobedient two of Bluebeard's unfortunate wivesaptly symbolizes the protagonist's premonitions of doom about her marriage to a man she is desperately afraid of losing, although she describes him as obtuse, blundering and predictable. (November 17) Copyright 1986 Cahners Business Information.