Stalin's Teardrops

Watson's ( The Flies of Memory ) new collection displays the wide range and subtlety of his short fiction. Although the first two stories are unfocused and somewhat heavy-handed, despite some wonderfully bizarre imagery, the remaining 10 tales are provocative and surprising. Many explore the blurred boundary between objective and subjective reality--in ''Stalin's Teardrops'' the efforts of Soviet mapmakers to obscure the geographical truth actually create alternative landscapes. Others are flavored with the surreal: in ''The Human Chicken'' an eight-pound fowl is born to a bemused young couple. The best selections transform traditional story types into new tales. ''The Beggars in Our Backyard'' is a thinly disguised allegory that avoids tendentiousness, managing to provide both entertainment and social commentary. ''The Pharaoh and the Mademoiselle'' might have been a typical tale of an Egyptian curse, but Watson's idiosyncratic approach makes it truly unusual; half the story is related from the point of view of a set of tiny figurines and the other half takes the form of a play. From the regional flavor of ''Tales from Weston Willow'' to the quirkiness of ''From the Annals of the Onomastic Society,'' these stories offer a wealth of diverse, intelligent reading.