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SEE THROUGH: STORIES BY NELLY REIFLER NEW YORK: SIMON & SCHUSTER. 148 PAGES. $21.
Nelly Reifler's debut short-story collection See Through is riddled with children too smart for their own good. Most are horrific little creatures, their impulses seemingly monstrous, but as the narrator of "Memoir" (a story about a plague outbreak) notes, horror and admiration "aren't as far apart as you think."
In "Baby," a new mother, faced with a preternaturally sentient nine-month-old, dreams of an infant as normal as she is and nearly smothers the baby to cease his relentless existentialist queries: "Why do we do it? Why do we continue, knowing...