THE PUSHCART PRIZE XLIII

Name: THE PUSHCART PRIZE XLIII
Author: Bill Henderson
ISBN: 978-1-888889-88-8

edited by Bill Henderson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 6, 2018

Weighted toward the academy but, as ever, a state-of-the-genre summary of trends in fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction.

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Latest installment of the annual creative-writing anthology, now in its 43rd year.

Always a wide-open collection, the Pushcart Prize is visibly more diverse than ever; while this volume is full of the usual suspects (Robert Hass, Rick Moody, Robert Coover), it abounds in young writers of widely different backgrounds and experiences, as if to affirm contributor Brian Doyle’s lovely thought that “whatever you think you know about a person or an animal or a tree because it is a certain species or color or nativity is probably egregiously wrong.” That said, the opening piece, by the well-established novelist and essayist Pam Houston, is one of the standouts of the collection, a meditation on the passing of a dog that opens onto reflections of a life divided among town and gown (“To the people in Creede I am intelligent, suspiciously sophisticated, and elitist to the point of being absurd. To the people at UC Davis I am quaint, a little slow on the uptake, and far too earnest to even believe”). The piece closes with an elegant note on the beauty of a nature besieged by our barbarous kind. On the place front, old hippie Steve Stern recalls the Fayetteville, Arkansas, of old, as personified by the recently deceased poet C.D. Wright: “It gives me vertigo to find myself hanging about on earth in her absence.” Jessica Burstein’s story “All Politics,” a goofy exercise in improbable name-dropping dedicated to “Professor James Franco,” is nicely observed and pleasingly sardonic (“The treadmills were circa 1990s, circa Kurt Cobain, really old and without any video…”), while the winner of the great Walter Mitty moment is Sanjay Agnihatri’s “Guerrilla Marketing," which speaks quietly but urgently to the discontents of the overqualified and, yes, besieged immigrant (says the goddess Lakshmi to the protagonist, “Did you think I’d allow you to remain in debt and spend your days serving buffet lunches to ugly Americans?”).

Weighted toward the academy but, as ever, a state-of-the-genre summary of trends in fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction.

Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-888889-88-8

Page Count: 620

Publisher: Pushcart

Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2018

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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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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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.