Survey those who care about such things and the late Raymond Carver’s name inevitably surfaces among the most regarded of short story writers. Much like of his own life, his characters lead lives of quiet desperation; often joyless existences marked by minor disasters. These are among the bleakest, yet most humane pieces of writing in print. As a result he inspired imitators by the dozen, but none with the same lightness, the same appreciation of unaffected language.

Ethan Canin has been hailed by many as Carver’s heir. His first, garlanded collection - The Emperor of the Air - was published while he was still in his twenties. It was followed by a novel, Blue Water. And now this, The Palace Thief, a haul of novellas.

Canin is American and to Americans, it seems, the ballgame is sacred. It crops up twice here. In ‘Accountant’, Abba Roth tells us of his life and of how not trusting to fate and investing in his friend’s idea cost him a slice of the millionaire lifestyle he glimpses when he’s invited on a residential baseball camp by the self same man. To a man who works with it, it’s only then that Abba really understands what money means. The result is an act of petty desperation.

‘Accountant’ works because the baseball itself isn’t the obvious metaphor but more a means to an end. ‘City of Broken Hearts’ signals problems from the title on in; the kind of conspicuous title Carver wouldn’t use for this story of a divorced man and his grown son. Brent comes home for a ballgame and the two learn things about themselves and relationships with women. These aren’t Carverish people; these are TV movie people. This is mawkish in a way the rest are not. ‘City of Broken Hearts’ tries too hard to tell us things instead of letting us discover them.

‘Batorsag and Szerelem’ plays the distinctly un-Carverish trick of a surprise ending. It saves an ambush for the final lines, but it’s a gambit that defines the whole piece, that gives it a final shape; it is forgivable. The relationship between a boy and his older brother is the canvass. The older boy is a maths champ, has a girlfriend his younger brother shockingly learns is also his lover, and is coining a curious, made-up language with best friend. Canin’s ways with the secret language, the approach of the girlfriend towards the other brother, and the uneasy rapport between the parents and children are nicely sketched.

Hundert - in the title story - is a teacher who comes up against Sedgewick Bell, a new pupil with a politically powerful father, at the private school where he teaches history. When he catches the boy cheating in a quiz he is faced with a choice between his vocation and the truth. Either way, history has a way of not letting him forget. This and ‘Accountant’ are the book’s best pieces.

Carver himself never wrote a novel (a few paltry fragments is all) and to call any of his stories a novella would really be to stretch the point. But with ‘The Palace Thief’ we can appreciate the comparison between the two authors. Canin peoples his work with characters that Carver would understand. Small people coming to terms with futility, wrenched by casual catastrophes others seldom notice. Canin’s flirting with different lengths shows him capable of transposing the form from short story to novel. Whether he is the new Raymond Carver remains to be seen, or indeed whether he can escape the great man’s shadow. As evidence, The Palace Thief is promising.