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PRIZE STORIES 2001

Name: PRIZE STORIES 2001
Author: Larry Dark
ISBN: 0-385-49878-0

THE O. HENRY AWARDS

edited by Larry Dark ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 4, 2001

A strong year for the series.

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For this year’s collection—short fiction’s version of the All-Star Team—editor Dark has reduced the number of stories from twenty to seventeen in order to include three lengthier pieces.

Refreshingly, each of the three longer stories departs from current fiction’s overly familiar “middle-class quotidian” terrain. Mary Swan’s “The Deep”—given First Prize by judges Mary Gordon, Michael Chabon, and Mona Simpson—takes place during WWI and centers on a pair of peculiarly co-dependent female twins who go overseas as civilian volunteers. In Andrea Barrett’s “Servants of the Map,” a nervous British surveyor traverses the Himalayas of the 1860s, while George Saunders’s brilliant “Pastoralia” (printed, fortunately, from the full text in Saunders’s book of the same name, and not from The New Yorker’s truncated version) is about a hapless fellow playing a caveman in a “historical” theme park. The judges give Second Prize to Dan Chaon’s “Big Me,” an extraordinary piece about a boy in Nebraska who becomes convinced that a stranger on his block is his future self. Meanwhile, ever-reliable Alice Munro takes both Third Prize, with “Floating Bridge,” and a Special Award for Continuing Achievement. This award was last given in 1986, to Joyce Carol Oates, who also appears in this year’s collection, her 29th O. Henry selection. There are a few weird recurrences—in two separate stories, people come across children’s hands—and, as usual, a preoccupation with illness and violence. The inclusion of historical fiction—as well as wonderfully strange fare like Pinckney Benedict’s “Zog-19: A Scientific Romance,” about an alien made of iron and sentient gases who takes over the life and loves of a Seneca Valley farmer—keeps the volume various and interesting, despite a small handful of desultory pieces. Taking this year’s magazine award is The New Yorker, which published five of the seventeen stories.

A strong year for the series.

Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2001

ISBN: 0-385-49878-0

Page Count: 432

Publisher: Anchor

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2001

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 2000
edited by Larry Dark

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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.

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

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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...

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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.).