As promised, promising voices.
Seventeen stories or novel excerpts, chosen by guest editor Prose from, presumably, the most talented among the nation’s university writing programs.
The best of the new voices here address life a far distance from academia and with distinctive language. Rattawut Lapcharoensap’s “Farangs” is told from the perspective of a Thai resort owner’s son: “June: the Germans come to the island . . . speaking like spitting July: the Italians, the French, the British, the Americans . . . . Americans are the fattest, the stingiest of the bunch. They may pretend to like pad thai or grilled prawns or the occasional curry, but twice a week they need their . . . hamburgers and their pizzas. They’re also the worst drunks.” In Frances Hwang’s poignant “Garden City,” a Chinese couple invest in an unrentable apartment in Queens, attracted by its gardens, and play out the tensions connected with the death of their son from cancer at 15 through the trials of renting to a woman who loses her job and then, perhaps, her mind. (This is Hwang’s second appearance in a Best New American Voices anthology.) There are also more predictable stories of thwarted romance. Joshua Ferris’s narrator in “More Abandon” stays at the office all night, becoming increasingly reckless. He leaves Genevieve, a female coworker, five long confessional messages, switches one woman’s pig office decor for a guy’s pictures of a girl, taking much too long to reach its conclusion that “Maybe he wants to be fired. The only cure to loving Genevieve.” In “Dog Children,” by Tamara Guirado, Maggie tries to save her relationship with Avashai (formerly Donny, her Irish/Cherokee lover) by watching porn with him in her barn apartment near Seattle: “ . . . they could hear the soft nickering of the neighbor’s horses while on the television screen, a small blond woman in a red neckerchief straddled the supine body of Long Dong Silver.” And Rebecca Barry, in “Snow Fever,” superbly captures a barroom’s pseudo intimacy.
As promised, promising voices.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-15-602899-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harvest/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2004
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
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.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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