John Lane has done it again.
In his new collection of short stories (“Interval Ownership: New Tales From Edisto,” 2026, Mercer University Press, 171 pages) highlighting week-long vacations on Edisto Island on the coast of South Carolina at the Shearwater residency that operates on what is called an “interval ownership,” we get a new genre of fiction that is a kind of “beachfront bingo,” as he calls it, and at the same time is a kind of fictional memoir.
In this sense, and considering Lane’s supreme talents as a first-tier prose-writer, the Spartanburg, S.C., resident’s work reminds one of the writings of Chekhov, whom he quotes in the frontmatter of this book: “How unbearable at times are people who are happy, people for whom everything works out.” “Interval Ownership” is a classic and every bit as good, if different, from his previous two novels.