Lowell Komie’s legal fiction deals with the issues that all of the people involved in some way or other with the law –lawyers, judges, law students, laypersons suing or being sued– sooner or later have to face. The ethical implications of our actions, the stubbornness with which we cling to ideals even in the face of serious adversity, and the way in which we come to terms with the cards life has dealt us – all these “large” themes are explored throughout the collection, with often unexpected outcomes.

Komie’s writing is at its best when he describes life in the big firms. His elegant, nuanced, dead-on-target stories capture the quiet despair of lawyers trapped day and night inside the crushing machine – the dilemmas faced by young students about to enter professional life – the jaded cynicism of older lawyers who have exchanged their family lives, and sometimes also their principles, for the dazzling allure of material wealth.

A colleague once told me the following joke: A young lawyer at a corporate firm tells another that he’s going to leave at 6 pm, since he has a doctor appointment. The second lawyer says: “Oh, so you’ll be taking the afternoon off?” Sadly, this comment might have been made in complete earnest in numberless firms around the world. Komie’s treatment of the people who work for them is at the same time compassionate and subtly ironic.

Stories like “The Interview”, “The Ice Horse”, “Mentoring”, and “The Balloon of William Fuerst” are exquisite in their attentiveness to detail and full of an engaging, melancholy wisdom.

Although this collection includes pieces written quite a few years back, none of the inclusions feels dated – it seems that the situations that inform them have, if anything, become starker and more complex in the years since Mr. Komie started writing about lawyers. It is to the author’s credit that he has managed to infuse an often dismal reality with poignancy, humor, and great beauty.

Laura Chalar is a 30-year-old Uruguayan writer and lawyer. Her first book of poetry appeared in 2005 in Montevideo, and her collection of short stories about the legal profession will be published in June 2007.