A Dove of the East and Other Stories

by Mark Helprin

Knopf. $6.95

This collection brings to mind a workbasket full of pretty projects, all unfinished. The author affects a dreamy, antique style for the telling of his wispy romances, then turns most of them into shaggy-dog stories by refining atmosphere at the expense (nearly total) of plot and characterization. There’s a fatiguing sameness of tone throughout, though the settings are ambitiously diverse. It appears that Helprin is striving for loveliness above all else, a tasteful but hardly compelling goal for a teller of tales.