THE WHORE’S CHILD AND OTHER STORIES, by Richard Russo, Alfred A. Knopf, 2002, 272 pages, hardcover, $24.

Richard Russo is the workingman’s F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Russo’s characters are what Gatsby would’ve been had he lived in a subdivision or a small-town apartment. Though none lives as opulently, each desperately reaches for the green light at the end of the dock, and each ends up beaten back by the current.

His epic tale of a crumbling Maine mill town and the struggles of its residents, “Empire Falls,” won a Pulitzer Prize this spring – a hard act to follow. But his latest collection of short fiction, “The Whore’s Child and Other Stories,” is a worthy successor, brimming with everyday people dealing, often unsuccessfully, with the challenges of their everyday lives.

In other words, it’s vintage Russo. Abridged.

Readers of Russo’s 1997 novel, “Straight Man,” will recognize its protagonist, Hank Devereaux, in “The Farther You Go.” The story reads like a harsher, castaway chapter from the book. It is in its harshness that “The Whore’s Child and Other Stories” strays from Russo’s previous work. Though his characters often wage futile battles, they usually are sympathetic, nice guys trapped in bad situations.

There aren’t too many nice guys (or gals) in Russo’s short stories. Nor is there much room for sympathy. These characters aren’t fighting the good fight against a bad lot. They’re fighting their own desires, denials and shortcomings – and often coming up short.

In “Buoyancy,” a retired professor and his wife take a long-awaited vacation to Martha’s Vineyard. They struggle to put the past behind them and manage to find a shard of happiness. But in the end, it turns out to be too little, too late.

An adventure-starved mother and her adolescent son leave Dad at home and hit the road in “Joy Ride.” In their wild trip across the country, their luck, money and steam start to dwindle. Their escapade turns ugly, and Mom manages to delude herself about the purpose of the trip.

In “Monhegan Light,” a Hollywood filmmaker and his younger girlfriend travel to the island for a “vacation” in which the filmmaker meets his dead wife’s lover, a famous painter. Through the artist’s eyes, he sees his long-suffering wife in an entirely different light, but again, it’s too little, too late.

It’s too much, too late, in the poignant title story. A determined nun enters the narrator’s college fiction-writing course, unenrolled, and proceeds to stubbornly tell her own – nonfiction – story. When she gets to the final chapter, a classmate points out a startling truth that the nun had never considered, or, perhaps, steadfastly denied.

Russo saves his best stuff for last, though, in the shining “Mysteries of Linwood Hart.” Lin is a small, young, would-be baseball player in the spirit of Owen Meany. Like Owen, he’s convinced he knows things that other people don’t, and that the universe centers on him. Unlike Owen, he finds that this is not the case. He doesn’t save anyone. He’s not on a mission from God. And in the end, he’s relieved to find out that the things he doesn’t know are often more important than the things he does know.

Though this is his first collection of short stories, Russo proves yet again that he is a master of fiction. His characters are real enough to touch, to see, to loathe, and to identify with. No matter how unlikable they may be, Russo is careful not to judge them. He gently reveals the complexities of their lives. And like his protagonist Lin Hart found, what the author doesn’t show often is more important than what he does show.

In true Russo fashion, “The Whore’s Child and Other Stories” can be hilarious one moment and bring readers to tears the next. The dialogue is brilliant, the characters sterling, and the stories truly engaging.

Russo’s new book will be available in stores on Tuesday.