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THE PUSHCART PRIZE XLI

Name: THE PUSHCART PRIZE XLI
Author: Bill Henderson
ISBN: 978-1-888889-81-9

BEST OF THE SMALL PRESSES 2017 EDITION

edited by Bill Henderson with Pushcart Prize editors ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 8, 2016

There’s something for everyone here, and anyone with an interest in contemporary letters will want to see the venerable...

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Forty-one and counting: the latest installment of the literary prize volume delivers, as ever, with abundance and occasional splendor.

The Pushcart franchise fires on all cylinders, bringing in work by relative newcomers as well as old hands. Sometimes this causes a bit of whiplash. How, after all, can a novice fictionist compete with the likes of “He lived in a world of grease, and no matter how often he bathed, which was once a day, rigorously—and no shower but a drawn bath—he smelled of carnitas, machaca, and the chopped white onion and soapy cilantro he folded each morning into his pico de gallo”? That’s T.C. Boyle, exulting in the pages of Kenyon Review in gritty details and food porn, and his precisely observed approach sets a standard that not all of the pieces gathered here meet. On the nonfiction side, originally writing in Granta, Barry Lopez sets a similarly high bar, earnest and instructive: “Over the years traveling cross-country with indigenous people I absorbed two lessons about how to be more fully present in an encounter with a wild animal.” Those two lessons might save someone’s life, worth the price of admission of the prize anthology, or they might simply inspire some other fine writer on nature and/or fact. One such scribe is Eric Wilson, whose memoir of an eccentric Faroese writer is restrained but affecting; allowing for the rather flat short story that precedes it, it makes a good start to a long and overstuffed volume. Indeed, that flatness seems a desideratum in the workshop-ish phylum (“After seven weeks at college, it still felt funny to Chandra to wear shower shoes, which were highly recommended to avoid fungus”), but nothing some time with the likes of Martin Espada, Elizabeth Scanlon, and Jenn Shapland can’t take care of.

There’s something for everyone here, and anyone with an interest in contemporary letters will want to see the venerable Pushcart’s picks.

Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-888889-81-9

Page Count: 650

Publisher: Pushcart

Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
PUSHCART PRIZE L
by Bill Henderson & edited by Pushcart Prize editors

- BOOK REVIEW
THE PUSHCART PRIZE XLIX
edited by Bill Henderson with Pushcart Prize editors

- BOOK REVIEW
THE PUSHCART PRIZE XLVIII
edited by Bill Henderson

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE LAND OF SWEET FOREVER
by Harper Lee ; edited by Casey Cep

- BOOK REVIEW
GO SET A WATCHMAN
by Harper Lee

- SEEN & HEARD
The Snowy Day Is NYC Library’s Most Popular Book

- SEEN & HEARD
ALA Releases List of 2020’s Most Challenged Books

- SEEN & HEARD
NYT Readers Voting on Best Book of Past 125 Years

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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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.