edited by Joyce Carol Oates and Christopher R. Beha ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 14, 2008
Usable as an introduction to a canon in the making, but inconsequential, even for an anthology.
A usual-suspects gathering of living American short-story writers, with a few nods to the up-and-coming generation.
A short story is to a novel as an hour is to a year: a vignette, a slice of life, a situation. When the late Raymond Carver wrote one, it ended inconclusively and unhappily; if David Foster Wallace writes one, it has footnotes; if any one of a thousand young Brooklyn residents or MFA grads writes one, it is usually “edgy,” with lots of product placement. Happily, Oates (My Sister, My Love, 2008, etc.) and debut acolyte Beha open with one of the most classically minded of contemporary short fictionists, namely the Spokane Indian writer Sherman Alexie, who, like the Kiowa writer N. Scott Momaday (alive, but not included), can jab neatly at white audiences while beating most of their authors at their own game; in this instance, Alexie’s oft-anthologized “The Toughest Indian in the World” does the sparring. Junot Díaz and Edwidge Danticat represent the two halves of Hispaniola, with Díaz similarly turning multiculturalism on its head by making mock-heroes of tenement losers (“Tonight me and Aurora sit in front of the TV and split a case of Budweiser. This is going to hurt, she says, holding her can up.”) Stuart Dybek delivers a neat turn on baseball (“Most guys are washed up by seventeen”); Annie Proulx does the customary duty of conjuring a downer on the High Plains; and Jhumpa Lahiri turns in a curiously flat piece of suburban angst. But the rest of the collection contains nary a surprise, with the well known (Ford, McGuane, Gaitskill, Chabon) doing what they do so well—and have done in many other collections, which this one does nothing to supplant or best.
Usable as an introduction to a canon in the making, but inconsequential, even for an anthology.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-166158-7
Page Count: 768
Publisher: Perennial/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2008
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by Joyce Carol Oates ; edited by Greg Johnson
BOOK REVIEW
edited by Joyce Carol Oates
BOOK REVIEW
by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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