WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

From 15 authors, as many stories and excerpts from longer, sometimes autobiographical works—together developing the collection's theme with a subtlety and power transcending its splendid components. With unusual intelligence and imagination, the editors have chosen stories of the highest caliber to explore a subject of vital interest to YAs: the fascinating variety in friendship's love/hate relationships. Ray Bradbury's opener depicts the unexpected anger experienced when a best friend moves away; Joyce Carol Oates evokes a mesmerizing man who, wheedling and threatening, lures a feckless teenager from her home to a fate left to the horrified imagination; Louise Erdrich portrays a suicidal vet who still loves his friend enough to go along with the elaborate charade the friend has devised to restore his interest in life; stricken with horror and compassion, Tim O'Brien visualizes the Vietnamese soldier he has just killed as husband, scholar, and fellow man. The earliest story here is Carson McCullers's ``Sucker'' (1940)—a boy's egocentric posturing destroys his younger cousin's trust just as he's beginning to value it; the last entry, concluding a collection as extraordinary for its variety as for its richness, is Maya Angelou's seminal encounter with an awe-inspiring mentor. Not to be missed. (Short stories. 12+)