SHORT TAKES

Anne Stephenson 
Arizona Republic 

   My Dream of You' 
   By Nuala O'Faolain 
   Riverhead 
   What happens to a middle-aged woman who suddenly realizes, as she approaches 50, that life is about to leave her in its wake? Kathleen deBurca is an Irishwoman living in London, a successful travel writer whose solitary existence is peppered with a history of one-night stands. Now even those are winding down. When a dear friend and colleague dies unexpectedly, Kathleen is moved to leave her job and return to her turbulent homeland after an absence of 30 years. Her purpose: to research and write about a divorce scandal that occurred in a remote part of Ireland in the mid-1800s after the wife of an English landowner had a torrid affair with one of her husband's Irish servants. O'Faolain's novel explores the parallels between both stories -- that of the adulterous wife and that of the aging Kathleen, both of whom are pressed to find happiness before it is too late. O'Faolain writes fiction with the same honesty and lack of sentimentality she brought to her first book, "Are You Somebody?"' 

   My First Movie 
   Edited by Stephen Lowenstein 
   Pantheon 
   Joel and Ethan Coen were inspired to make "Blood Simple'' while doing rewrites for producers of non-mainstream horror movies - or, as the Coens call them, "low-budget splatter films.'' Ang Lee, whose budget for his first film, "Pushing Hands,'' was a mere $400,000, recalls having a Chinese good luck ceremony (''you have this sacrifice on the table, then you pray before you put the incense in a bowl and hit a gong'') on the first day of shooting. Oliver Stone's first film, "Salvador,'' got mixed reviews, but Stone was comforted by news that Bob Dylan had attended a screening and said it was a good movie. Anthony Minghella had to shoot "Truly Madly Deeply'' in just 28 days and so, he says, "I tried to write something that was small enough to do in that time.'' Lack of money, time and power seems to be the common thread running through these entertaining interviews with directors about their first films. Others include Barry Levinson, Pedro Almodovar, Mira Nair and Gary Oldman. 

   Seabiscuit: An American Legend 
   By Laura Hillenbrand 
   Random House 
   His body, writes Hillenbrand, was built low to the ground and had "all the properties of a cinder block.'' His walk was often mistaken for lameness. He had a sad little tail and stubby legs that didn't straighten all the way, leaving him in what looked like a permanent semicrouch. But he won a race in Boston on June 29, 1936, and as luck would have it, a brilliant horse trainer named Tom Smith was there to see it. Later Smith watched while the horse was unsaddled, and the animal nodded back at him "kinda like he was paying me an honor to notice me.'' Smith and his boss, Charles Howard, bought Seabiscuit for a paltry $8,000 and set about remaking him into the horse that would become a cultural icon during the difficult years of the Great Depression. It didn't hurt that he was blessed with blistering speed, tactical savvy and an indomitable will.