bookshelf

THE PUSHCART PRIZE XXXIII

Name: THE PUSHCART PRIZE XXXIII
Author: Bill Henderson
ISBN: 978-1-888889-50-5

BEST OF THE SMALL PRESSES

edited by Bill Henderson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 1, 2008

As always, lots of bang for the buck: much good reading, much of it from obscure sources not often encountered outside these...

bookshelf

The venerable award turns 33 and gets a touch closer to its roots.

Some previous iterations of the annual Pushcart volumes have suffocated under the damp washrag of the writing workshop, staffed with the usual MFA mafia. Here, there are still one too many professors working under the influence of the easily imitated Raymond Carver, with this short-story snippet serving as a representative of the lot: “Frances drinks coffee and thinks about life as a long-haul driver, how uncomplicated it must be. How quiet.” (An academic who visited a truck cab would be surprised at how noisy the damn thing is.) Serving as a useful counterfoil, if perhaps an unwonted celebrity, is film director Ethan Coen, of bookish O Brother, Where Art Thou? fame, who writes of the sorts of things a John Goodman-like character might do with an evening, “nasty things till orgasm grabbed us and we yelled holy hell.” (Take that, postmoderns!) The poetry, as ever, is a mixed bag, including much too long, overstuffed, academic pieces such as Mary Kinzie’s “The Water-Brooks,” but also some fine, more narrowly focused ruminations like Afaa Michael Weaver’s rightly angry “American Income” (“black men know the gold / of being the dead center of things”). Among the nonfiction highlights are William deBuys’s sturdy reflections on the dead things found in deserted woods, some of them put there by the finder long ago; Harrison Solow’s account of the best singer you have never heard, who lives in a tiny village in Wales; and Floyd Skloot’s powerful, hard-wrested memoir of life after severe brain injury. Best title: “Mormons in Heat.” Runner-up: “A Berryman Concordance Against the Silence.” Honorable mention: “Chances Are, Lafayette, Indiana.”

As always, lots of bang for the buck: much good reading, much of it from obscure sources not often encountered outside these annual pages.

Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2008

ISBN: 978-1-888889-50-5

Page Count: 620

Publisher: Pushcart

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2008

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

bookshelf

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

bookshelf

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

bookshelf

DISTANT SHORES

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2002

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...

bookshelf

Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.

After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).