Forty-five years on, the Pushcart annual is as strong and wide-ranging as ever.
The venerable prize volume adds another year without getting crusty.
Nominations for the Pushcart Prize are open to small, independent literary presses—magazines and book publishers now online as well as print—anywhere in the world. That said, several journals are near constants, such as McSweeney’s, with a standout contribution in Luis Alberto Urrea’s short story “The Night Drinker.” It begins as a piece of near-future apocalypticism, with the world engulfed by rising seawater (“in that tide came garbage and dead creatures and black waves”), that takes a near-idyllic turn as Mexico City returns to its erstwhile, pre-Columbian role as one of the world’s great metropolises, and that then ends on a note of horror (with Urrea nodding at H.P. Lovecraft, “that old racist”). No less foreboding, though without the ghastly resolution, is Elizabeth McCracken’s “It’s Not You,” from Zoetrope: All-Story, in which a hotel-room assignation goes awry in a fog of alcohol and miscalculation: “It is the fear of judgment that keeps me behaving, most of the time, like the religious,” says her narrator. “Not of God, but of strangers.” One such stranger is the “radio shrink” who observes of the narrator’s day drinking, “Hair of the dog,” to which she replies, “Hair of the werewolf.” Jane Hirshfield, a familiar presence in Pushcart, turns in a lovely but pensive poem that comes from a culinary anthology but centers on the darkness of living on “an earth where loss // is so all present / that we drink it without thinking / blue-white in its early morning glass.” Yet another standout is a story by Austin Smith, better known as a poet, about an Amish man who works out his grief for the loss of two children by making a break for the world of the English (“He was weeping, but there was no beard to catch his tears”)—a Rumspringa from which he won’t return. Or will he?
Forty-five years on, the Pushcart annual is as strong and wide-ranging as ever.Pub Date: Dec. 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-9600977-0-8
Page Count: 600
Publisher: Pushcart
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
A pleasant if not entirely convincing tribute to the power of art.
A French art historian’s English-language fiction debut combines the story of a loving relationship between a grandfather and granddaughter with an enlightening discussion of art.
One day, when 10-year-old Mona removes the necklace given to her by her now-dead grandmother, she experiences a frightening, hour-long bout of blindness. Her parents take her to the doctor, who gives her a variety of tests and also advises that she see a psychiatrist. Her grandfather Henry tells her parents that he will take care of that assignment, but instead, he takes Mona on weekly visits to either the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, or the Centre Pompidou, where each week they study a single work of art, gazing at it deeply and then discussing its impact and history and the biography of its maker. For the reader’s benefit, Schlesser also describes each of the works in scrupulous detail. As the year goes on, Mona faces the usual challenges of elementary school life and the experiences of being an only child, and slowly begins to understand the causes of her temporary blindness. Primarily an amble through a few dozen of Schlesser’s favorite works of art—some well known and others less so, from Botticelli and da Vinci through Basquiat and Bourgeois—the novel would probably benefit from being read at a leisurely pace. While the dialogue between Henry and the preternaturally patient and precocious Mona sometimes strains credulity, readers who don’t have easy access to the museums of Paris may enjoy this vicarious trip in the company of a guide who focuses equally on that which can be seen and the context that can’t be. Come for the novel, stay for the introductory art history course.
A pleasant if not entirely convincing tribute to the power of art.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2025
ISBN: 9798889661115
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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