Review Excerpt:

THIS LIFE SHE'S CHOSEN: Stories. By Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum. (Chronicle, $19.95.)
Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum makes an impressive debut with this collection of carefully composed stories, chiefly concerned with the cross-purposes at work within families. In the title story, a flamboyantly artistic mother, Isabelle, visits the measured world of Camille, her newly married daughter, rekindling Camille's sense of pique at Isabelle's many small betrayals. The wife in ''Surfacing'' suspects her husband of having affairs, but spurns the chance to have one herself. And in ''The Virtuoso,'' a violin teacher and his wife turn ever so slightly against a star pupil. Throughout the collection, Lunstrum convincingly captures small cruelties and circumspect revolts. Nothing grand happens, and the stories end after subtle shifts in relationships with little more than a coat fluttering in the wind or the sound of skis gliding off into the night. While it's a relief to come across an author who's unafraid of small moments, there are times when Lunstrum's subtlety begins to feel like vagueness, when a description of light or a smell or a sound seems less about choosing an appropriate objective correlative than about avoiding conflict and conclusion. Then again, it's not hard to extend the benefit of the doubt to such a promising young writer.