Sure, “The State of Grace,” the title story, and “The Quarrel” form a brilliant little trilogy, sharing a narrator and depicting a midcentury adolescence made numinous by yearning-economic, intellectual, cultural, erotic take your pick if you can tell them apart.

IS HAROLD BRODKEY THE GREATEST-or at any rate, the most lauded-writer who never produced a great book? His 1958 debut, First Love and Other Sorrows, was a big hit but hasn’t aged well.