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PRIZE STORIES 1997

Name: PRIZE STORIES 1997
Author: Larry Dark
ISBN: 0-385-48361-9

THE O. HENRY AWARDS

edited by Larry Dark ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1997

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The fortunes of the short story are about as uncertain today as those of Bosnia, mainly because it's no longer clear whether this once-popular literary form has many readers who are not writers themselves. This new entry in the venerable annual series doesn't much help clarify matters. The tales gathered by editor Dark (The Literary Traveler, 1994) were originally published in the usual rarefied venues—i.e., nonprofit quarterlies and the New Yorker— and most of them read like workshop exercises or novel fragments. Mary Gordon, in ``City Life,'' leads off the parade with yet another of her postmodern Horatio Alger tales, this one about a faculty wife at Columbia who thinks she has put her lower-class origins safely behind her until a weird encounter with a deranged neighbor. John Barth, in ``On With the Story,'' gets metaphysical in his description of an unhappily married young woman on a cross- country flight increasingly unsettled by the short story she is reading, which seems practically a portrait of her own life, and unaware that the stranger in the seat beside her is its author. ``Dancing After Hours'' gives us Andre Dubus's by-now quite familiar portrait of broken-down passion in backwoods Massachusetts, this time involving a retired schoolteacher who tends bar and an invalid. Representatives of the younger generation include Thomas Glave, who, in ``The Final Inning,'' describes the tensions that build up among the friends and relatives of a young black man from the ghetto who has died of AIDS, and how they erupt- -quite literally over the body of the deceased. And Rick Moody, in ``Demonology,'' also deals with a death in the family, this one being a young mother in suburban New Jersey who is remembered by her troubled younger brother. Pale and wan and surprisingly unambitious throughout. Introspection may be the prerequisite of serious literature, but it is not its end—and is obviously not its guarantee.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1997

ISBN: 0-385-48361-9

Page Count: 496

Publisher: Anchor

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1997

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE STORY PRIZE
edited by Larry Dark

- BOOK REVIEW
THE O. HENRY PRIZE STORIES 2002
edited by Larry Dark

- BOOK REVIEW
PRIZE STORIES 2001
edited by Larry Dark

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FIREFLY LANE

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2008

Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of...

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Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest (Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State.

Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. When Tully lands a reporting job with a Today-like show, her career shifts into hyperdrive. Johnny and Kate had started an affair once Tully moved to Manhattan, and when Kate gets pregnant with daughter Marah, they marry. Kate is content as a stay-at-home mom, but frets about being Johnny’s second choice and about her unrealized writing ambitions. Tully becomes Seattle’s answer to Oprah. She hires Johnny, which spells riches for him and Kate. But Kate’s buttons are fully depressed by pitched battles over slutwear and curfews with teenaged Marah, who idolizes her godmother Tully. In an improbable twist, Tully invites Kate and Marah to resolve their differences on her show, only to blindside Kate by accusing her, on live TV, of overprotecting Marah. The BFFs are sundered. Tully’s latest attempt to salvage Cloud fails: The incorrigible, now geriatric hippie absconds once more. Just as Kate develops a spine, she’s given some devastating news. Will the friends reconcile before it’s too late?

Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of poignancy.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008

ISBN: 978-0-312-36408-3

Page Count: 496

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK TO SCREEN
4 Adaptations To Watch in February

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THE ALCHEMIST

by Paulo Coelho & translated by Margaret Jull Costa ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1993

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.

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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.