Selected Stories.

• Author: Mujica, Barbara

Women, for Adolfo Bioy Casares, are fascinatingly and exasperatingly Other. In "Women Are All the Same," he writes that "life with women is like military service, a military service that should be mandatory for all young men, since it completes our education and builds character. Through women we overcome our weakness and, what's more important, we learn to be neat, to make the bed, to prepare tea." Bioy's suave irony reflects an ambivalence toward women. They carry men to new dimensions, then hurl them unceremoniously back to earth. They are mysterious in their very banality, and they are as destructive as they are alluring. Sometimes they inspire great sacrifices; sometimes they seem not to be worth the effort.

Selected Stories contains short fiction from the mid- 1950s through the late 1980s; the choice of works reflects Bioy's and translator Suzanne Jill Levine's own preferences, as well as prevailing critical opinion. Bioy's unique blend of the erotic and fantastic provides thematic unity, even as the plot variations suggest the infinite permutations of romantic love. Bioy's tongue-in-cheek earnestness undermines the grandiose cliches of traditional erotic literature, yet the very insipidness of the dialogue often suggests profound alienation.

Many of Bioy's stories revolve around trips, for magic seems somehow more admissible in exotic places. In "Souvenir from the Mountains," for example, the narrator accompanies his friend's beautiful wife, Violeta, to Cordoba. Instead of two rooms, as he requested, the trusted escort is given one, which he must share with his charming charge -- a terrible burden since he is secretly in love with her. In spite of his desire, he manages not to betray his friend's faith, mostly due to Violeta's exemplary behavior. Yet, one night he awakens to the sounds of Violeta making love in the next bed with a crude French skier. Did he dream it, or is Violeta not the chaste young wife he imagined? Once back in Buenos Aires, he declines to pursue the truth, for fantasy is an inextricable part of the experience of travel.

However, sometimes a trip can bring a person quickly back down to earth. In "An Affair," an English woman named Mildred escapes from her nagging husband and runs off to Rome, where Tulio, her Italian lover, awaits. When they met on vacation, Tulio seemed charming, but now, in his own environment, Mildred finds him absurdly pretentious, emotional, and concerned with other people's opinions. After...