the story begins....

In his smart and self-assured debut, My Life in Heavy Metal, Steve Almond breathes fresh life into the oft-explored territory of young love and longing. The 12 stories in this pulsating collection are populated with hookups, drunken kisses, failed passes, and souring relationships. And though it's an aggressively sexual affair (when it comes to getting it on in the bedroom--or on the bathroom sink, for that matter--Almond doesn't believe in fading to black), at its core it's a collection with heart. His characters stumble unrehearsed through the choreography of modern love, wearing their sloppy passions on their rumpled sleeves, aching to connect.

The memorable title story introduces David, an El Paso music critic on the "late-eighties hair bands" circuit who cheats on his longtime college girlfriend with an unassuming YMCA lifeguard. "Because we were a morning paper, I had to bang out my copy by midnight. I operated on a template involving an initial bad pun, a lengthy playlist--adjective, adjective, song title--and a description of the lead singer's hair." Almond hilariously captures the flirty, stylized banter and drinks-after-work breeziness of office life in "Geek Player, Love Slayer." He spins this bittersweet story from a female, first-person perspective as a thirtysomething reporter at an alternative weekly finds an unlikely obsession in the oddly alluring Lance, the paper's overconfident systems administrator ("How did Computer Guy become the Lifeguard of the decade?"). In another standout story, "How to Love a Republican," a doomed cross-party affair plays out against the 2000 presidential election.

Readers should take note of this solid debut and stay on the lookout for more from Almond--he's a sharp and surprisingly sensitive writer with plenty of stories to tell.

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This collection of 12 short stories is populated by some interesting characters in problematic situations and some not-so-interesting ones in situations familiar enough to be trite. The title story is an example of the latter, with its lackluster pop music critic caught in bed with a new conquest by his college lover. More successful is "Among the Ik," in which aging Professor Rodgers, uneasy with his adult children, recalls a bizarre experience from his early life in academia. Telling about it tests his coming to terms with widowhood; even a second reading of this poignant story is rewarding. "Geek Player, Love Slayer" is an update on the old-fashioned office romance and features a female reporter with a raunchy vocabulary that belies her 33 years. She engages in "lurid banter with Computer Boy" Lance, who can talk to machines. "How to Love a Republican" is thoroughly entertaining, with a James Carvill wannabe meeting his young Mary Matalin when they are in New Hampshire doing "issue work." The aftermath of the election dooms the romance, but the story is a humorous success. The narrator of "The Body in Extremis" is a 34-year-old composition teacher (Almond teaches creative writing at Boston College and Emerson College), who has an "essential problem": "Sexual ideation dominated my thoughts," he declares. This final story casts a narcissistic shadow over the preceding fiction, but there's enough intelligence, angst and humor woven through the collection to please the young audience at which it is aimed. Agent, Amy Williams of ICM. (Apr.)Forecast: This collection has a high entertainment quotient, as signaled by the title, previous publication of some of the stories in Playboy and Zoetrope, and Almond's smooth-flowing prose. Expect a few extra browser hits.