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PUSHCART PRIZE XXXVII

Name: PUSHCART PRIZE XXXVII
Author: Bill Henderson
ISBN: 978-1-888889-66-6

BEST OF THE SMALL PRESSES (2013 EDITION)

edited by Bill Henderson with Pushcart Prize editors ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 15, 2012

Essential for writers real and potential studying the market and otherwise reading the tea leaves. For others, not so much.

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An old literary warhorse plods along, with no sign of going lame—but without much energy, either.

Readers who have followed Pushcart from day one—or year 36, for that matter—will know the formula: From a mountain of submissions curated by a small army of guest editors, Henderson mounds up a smaller mountain of “important works” by way of a sampling of the annual zeitgeist. As ever, the anthology numbers about 600 pages; as ever, it’s fronted by a nicely ill-tempered complaint about the decline of publishing (a decline four decades running, that) and the end of the literary world as we know it; as ever, its organization shows no apparent reason, its poetry seldom a rhyme. And, as ever, there’s a mix of contributors: Some are well into their careers, some at the end, others at the very beginning. Most are allied to the academy and its mutual and reciprocal logrolling rituals. There are plenty of good things here, including stories by Wendell Berry and Joyce Carol Oates, stalwarts ever, and a deliciously enigmatic poem by Jane Hirshfeld. But there are no real surprises. The tropes and props are remarkably constant from year to year: alcoholism, failed love, old movies, dreams. (Always dreams.) And there’s no shortage of carefully crafted phrases, sanded to a fine gloss but never quite memorable (“Call me a Trendmonger, but I’ve sprung for a tree house”; “When midwestern bugs hit your windshield, they chink like marbles”). A trend in this year’s batch: As with the larger society, guns and their associated violence seem to be ever more evident (“At her hip she carries handcuffs, a telescoping baton, a .40 caliber Glock”) in these pages.

Essential for writers real and potential studying the market and otherwise reading the tea leaves. For others, not so much.

Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2012

ISBN: 978-1-888889-66-6

Page Count: 640

Publisher: Pushcart

Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE PUSHCART PRIZE XLVIII
edited by Bill Henderson

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THE PUSHCART PRIZE XLVII
edited by Bill Henderson

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PUSHCART PRIZE XLVI
edited by Bill Henderson

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.

Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.

Pub Date: March 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-609-60737-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

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Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.