Radioactive

November, 1998

Short stories are hard to write; they demand compression. They also need tight characters and a concise plot to keep us interested, and they seldom pay the rent. Which is why some writers turn to novels even though it's hard to maintain the intensity that made their short stuff kill. At times even an acclaimed novelist can't grip us with a longer story, which is the problem with Tim O'Brien's latest offering, the 347-page Tomcat in Love (Broadway Books). Ironically, Tomcat's first chapter, a sta...