Heartstop

Three long stories by a German writer, the most striking of which skillfully distributes itself between an unhurried, relaxed realism and a steadily building undertone of alien unease that climaxes with heavy knocks of fate. This standout is ''Finlandia,'' in which a young German couple, Sophie and Berndt, go off to an idyllic Finnish island for two weeks of canoeing, saunas, silence, endless .…