June 4, 2000 A WEDDING TOAST GOES SOUR Washington, D.C. writer Matthew Klam has hit a tape-measure home run with his debut collection Sam the Cat (Random House, $22.95, 243 pages). These provocative stories - many of which first appeared in the New Yorker - take hard swings at sex-obsessed jerks, self-important government workers, depressed newlyweds, sell-out advertising execs, and just about any other sort of typical person you can name. In "Issues I Dealt With in Therapy," the narrator attends the wedding of an old friend who has risen to a position of power as a political advisor - so high that Ruth Bader Ginsburg will be performing the ceremony and Madeleine Albright will be attending. Over the course of the weekend, the narrator comes to understand that he resents his friend's success and the distance that has grown between them over the years because of it. And it's while giving his toast at the wedding dinner - drunk and angry - that he lashes out, spewing a bilious testimonial that has other guests roaring with laughter at the same time that he is rupturing forever the last remnants of his friendship with the groom. In "The Royal Palms," the narrator and his significant other take a Caribbean vacation only to run into another American couple, whose flirtatious behavior threatens to devolve into relationship-testing flings for both partners. While these situations may seem somewhat conventional, the brilliance of the book lies in its inexplicably original narrative voice. You have never read anyone who puts sentences together in exactly this way. No matter how boorish the behavior of the characters becomes, you simply cannot stop reading. The frank sexuality and emotional honesty of these stories originally sparked a debate at the New Yorker about whether they were fit to be published in that august magazine. Luckily for us all, wiser heads prevailed. This collection is a treasure. Copyright © 2000 News World Communications, Inc.