Though more radical narrative strategies aren’t represented, the selection is of such consistently high quality that almost...
Among the 20 competitors in what novelist Patchett (Bel Canto, 2001, etc.) terms “the short story Olympics,” there are plenty of worthy contenders for the gold medal.
As usual, this annual anthology mixes stories from perennial favorites (including former guest editors Tobias Wolff and Ann Beattie, and the obligatory and always welcome Alice Munro) with selections from small-circulation literary journals, highlighting the range of possibility within the genre. Where a short-story collection by a single author tends to repeat patterns, rhythms and themes, there’s a much greater sense of serendipity and surprise here. Whether because of the luck of this year’s draw or the preferences of the guest editor, the narratives are typically more straightforward than experimental, frequently first person, strong on the storytelling verities of plot, character and dialogue. Many of them (including Donna Tartt’s “The Ambush,” Maxine Swann’s “Secret” and Benjamin Percy’s “Refresh, Refresh”) concern adolescent initiation and rites of passage. Though all of the writers are North American, the settings extend from a Korean island resort (Paul Yoon’s “Once the Shore”) and dog racing in Beijing (Jack Livings’s “The Dog”) to the Bosnian poetry community (Aleksandar Hemon’s “The Conductor”) and an American’s return to his family’s native Latvia (“A New Gravestone for an Old Grave”). Many of the stories tend toward the short side, but the last and longest is the most wickedly funny, as Beattie lampoons the bi-coastal memorial services of an esteemed painter turned alcoholic, pornographic comics illustrator. The shortest and strangest is Robert Coover’s “Grandmother’s Nose,” in which a young girl (in another rite of passage) comes to terms with death in a fairy-tale subversion of “Little Red Riding Hood.” In one of the most inventive, Katherine Bell’s “The Casual Car Pool” finds a sky-diving parachutist caught on a bridge, disrupting rush hour and complicating the lives of three strangers sharing a ride to qualify for the car-pool lane.
Though more radical narrative strategies aren’t represented, the selection is of such consistently high quality that almost any of these stories could be some reader’s favorite.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2006
ISBN: 0-618-54351-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2006
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
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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