As promised, promising voices.
Seventeen stories or novel excerpts, chosen by guest editor Prose from, presumably, the most talented among the nation’s university writing programs.
The best of the new voices here address life a far distance from academia and with distinctive language. Rattawut Lapcharoensap’s “Farangs” is told from the perspective of a Thai resort owner’s son: “June: the Germans come to the island . . . speaking like spitting July: the Italians, the French, the British, the Americans . . . . Americans are the fattest, the stingiest of the bunch. They may pretend to like pad thai or grilled prawns or the occasional curry, but twice a week they need their . . . hamburgers and their pizzas. They’re also the worst drunks.” In Frances Hwang’s poignant “Garden City,” a Chinese couple invest in an unrentable apartment in Queens, attracted by its gardens, and play out the tensions connected with the death of their son from cancer at 15 through the trials of renting to a woman who loses her job and then, perhaps, her mind. (This is Hwang’s second appearance in a Best New American Voices anthology.) There are also more predictable stories of thwarted romance. Joshua Ferris’s narrator in “More Abandon” stays at the office all night, becoming increasingly reckless. He leaves Genevieve, a female coworker, five long confessional messages, switches one woman’s pig office decor for a guy’s pictures of a girl, taking much too long to reach its conclusion that “Maybe he wants to be fired. The only cure to loving Genevieve.” In “Dog Children,” by Tamara Guirado, Maggie tries to save her relationship with Avashai (formerly Donny, her Irish/Cherokee lover) by watching porn with him in her barn apartment near Seattle: “ . . . they could hear the soft nickering of the neighbor’s horses while on the television screen, a small blond woman in a red neckerchief straddled the supine body of Long Dong Silver.” And Rebecca Barry, in “Snow Fever,” superbly captures a barroom’s pseudo intimacy.
As promised, promising voices.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-15-602899-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harvest/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2004
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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