These 38 stories, almost all short-shorts, were originally chosen by the PEN Syndicated Fiction Project to be published in newspapers and read aloud on ``The Sound of Writing,'' an NPR program. Solid work from a mixture of literary celebrities and relative unknowns more than make up for an overall slightness (dictated by the restricted format). The stories, limited to 2500 words, are intended, according to Marshall, to return fiction ``to the pages of Sunday magazines....'' Many of the pieces from brand-name writers are satisfying, if limited. Edward Abbey's ``Drunk in the Afternoon'' 2is an amusing sketch: ``Getting Drunk in the afternoon was something I once did on a regular weekly basis for many years.'' John Updike's ``The Football Factory'' is a densely detailed description from the point of view of a visiting dignitary; Joyce Carol Oates's ``Where Is Here?,'' a taut Kafkaesque drama, concerns a stranger who visits his childhood home and the family who now reside there. Some of the writers seem cramped by the word-count, but others, those who usually work in lyrical prose, are right at home: Rick Bass's ``Heartwood,'' about two wild boys who take to spiking trees, is typical of such pieces in the way it manages to render a closely observed instance and come to a summarizing epiphany: ``In the end, it all comes down to luck. Remember this and be grateful, be frightened.'' Since more than 2000 manuscripts were submitted to the PEN competition, luck and previous reputation had a good deal to do with what appears here. Though the short-short form is more conductive to light humor, limited effects, and luminous prose than to sea changes or tragic range, the best of these bathe the world, as Louise Erdrich's own quasimystical offering asserts, ``in a great surge of forgiving radiance.''
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-385-41670-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Anchor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1991
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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