In clean, spare prose, Jami Attenberg's story collection, Instant Love, recounts the travails of three young women as they search for that often-elusive connection with someone else. The characters Holly, Maggie, and Sarah Lee connect the eleven stories into one harmonious whole that focuses on the intimate moment of finding or losing love. Through the brief glimpses into her characters' lives, Attenberg captures the myriad emotions that underlie the many forms of love, ranging from teenage infatuation to the familiarity of familial ties to the companionship of marriage. The characters are realistic, with ordinary daily lives that ground the reader as the stories change location, time, and voice.

Holly is the focus of the first story, "The Perfect Triangle," in which she loses her first boyfriend to a co-worker. As she grows from a rebellious teenager to an adult, Holly lives without strong ties or connections to anyone. She meets a series of men, but like her estranged father (who is the focus of "The Manzanita Grove"), never settles down.

Maggie, her sister, leads a more traditional life with house, husband, and possessions until she rebels and moves to the opposite coast, where she re-invents her life in the evocatively written, "He Gives Pause." Maggie is more subdued than Holly, but has her own charm and quirks, as evidenced by a distinctive habit (described in wonderful detail in "The Sleepwalker") that proves irresistible to men.

Sarah Lee is the least visible of the three women, appearing as a main character in only two stories. She flits like a ghost through other stories, asserting her presence as a minor character until the very last story, "Sarah Lee Waits for Love," when she discovers her true love, and hopefully, a happy ending.

What's most intriguing about these stories are the tangential glimpses of the three women as they are seen through the eyes of family members and friends, a clever device that builds slowly from story to story. These small character traits create a three-dimensional view of each woman, that expands the third person limited point of view.

Attenberg flows easily from life to life and character to character, setting up each story so that the reader is quickly placed within the chronology of each woman's life. Some questions are left unanswered, such as, what do the girls' mothers think of their daughters' activities and does Maggie stop sleepwalking, but this echoes real life where you can't know everything about everyone you know.

A strong fiction debut, Instant Love is an easy read with substance and style.