Here are some lost members of the Boomer Generation-chronic underachievers at work and love-recurring characters in Dennis E. Bolen's Anticipated Results, his first story collection with Arsenal Pulp Press. Seeking solace in each other's dysfunctional company; conducting ill-organized interventions; throwing disastrous dinner parties; trying to fix their cars: all the disparate behaviours of a societal subset whose demeanour masks a disquieting rage at how they've lost their way and an impotent desire to try to find it again.

Written with unnerving eloquence evocative of Raymond Carver, Anticipated Results could be about any of us--wracked with self-doubt and anguish over what has come before, yet still clinging with vigor to the idea of what may yet come to be.