In my duties as a book reviewer I've read many works of fiction that were mildly interesting, fewer that were truly awful, fewer still that were really good, and very few that so captured my imagination and jolted me emotionally that I could call them revelatory.

Peter Weltner's unusual and strangely beautiful collection, Beachside Entries/Specific Ghosts, is one of that very rare breed. It is a revelation.

The book is divided into two independent sections separated by a group of drawings by Gerald Coble. The first section, "Beachside Entries," consists of 30 short pieces, each less than a page, that can only be described as prose poems on themes of loss and love. Weltner chooses to ignore linear components of short fiction such as characterization and plot, achieving unity, ten-sion and climax through his use of recurring imagery.

A swirl of Scotts, Dons, Phils and Joes move through "Beachside Entries," their lives and relationships inevitably altered by AIDS, while images from fairy tales and mythology and vignettes of natural and inexplicable disasters, war, religious persecution and pestilence weave in and out.

Initially, the presentation is disorienting and difficult to read. There appears to be no connecting thread, no protagonist, not even any clearly defined characters. What drew me to read on was the lyrical, measured, almost detached prose style that contains a succession of startling images and unexpected insights. The vague collection of proper names take on personalities, not from the scattering of information Weltner provides, but from my own memories of dead friends.

By the end of "Beachside Entries," the effect of Weltner's skillful image weaving is profoundly moving. The overwhelming sense of loss and attendant nostalgia caused by AIDS is repeatedly juxtaposed against foreboding and melancholy fantasy pieces whose accumulation of detail and magic reminded me of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Unlike many pieces of "experimental" fiction, the guiding force behind "Beachside Entries" is not technique, but emotion. Weltner has taken on the emotional enormity of AIDS by creating a patchwork of memory and myth that, when viewed as a whole, is as formally beautiful and as ultimately healing as anything I've read in recent years.

Memory also plays an important role in the second section of the book, "Specific Ghosts." Here Weltner uses the classic form of the American literary ghost story, borrowing specifically from Mary Wilkins Freeman, to study the effect of the death of a lover or friend on the survivor.

After the unconventional "Beachside Entries," "Specific Ghosts" comes as somewhat of a surprise. It consists of 10 brief, but traditionally narrated, short stories, each dealing with the restless dead and the unhappy living.

The stories are not horror tales. There's no violence, no bloody apparitions or howling banshees. Instead, Weltner's concern is psychology and mood. His goal is not to frighten, but to haunt. He refrains from ambiguity about the supernatural nature of the ghosts and makes it quite clear that the spirits depicted are no more or less real than a memory.

In one of the most beautiful stories, "A Record Collection," a man mourns his deceased lover, Alan, as he contemplates Alan's enormous, eccentrically organized record collection. The collection is so emblematic of Alan's personality, such a part of who and what Alan was, that when his lover tries rearranging it, Alan returns.

In "An Apparition on a Wall," two lovers' shadows merge after death. The most bizarre tale, "A Train Ride," concerns an extraordinarily handsome man whose talent for lying leads him into an otherworldly sexual encounter.

The joys of "Specific Ghosts" reside not only in the subtle craft of the ghost stories but also in Weltner's transposition of the modern gay male experience onto a classic literary form.

Yet just as in "Beachside Entries," the form and style are secondary to the emotional content. Even more important however is Weltner's decision to use fantasy as a mirror for what we experience in the "real world." If, as John Preston has said, the reality of AIDS is so incredible that it cannot be presented in the standard language of realistic fiction without appearing melodramatic, then Peter Weltner may have found one viable alternative.

His achievement in Beachside Entries/Specific Ghosts is in some ways groundbreaking. No other piece of fiction concerning AIDS has seemed more real to me or given me the same mixture of catharsis and hope as this book has. It is a jewel and anyone dissatisfied with the sameness and timidity of fiction these days cannot afford to miss it.