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THE O. HENRY PRIZE STORIES 2003

Name: THE O. HENRY PRIZE STORIES 2003
Author: Laura Furman
ISBN: 1-4000-3131-1

edited by Laura Furman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 14, 2003

Overall, a highly talented lineup—and well worth the asking price.

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Eighty-six years, another twenty stories: New series editor Furman, along with judges David Guterson, Diane Johnson, and Jennifer Egan, presents this year’s roundup of prize tales, ranging from the traditional to the experimental, though almost all taking aim at the human heart.

“There is a tendency in short ficion—I feel it when writing myself—to conclude and resolve,” says Egan, but the stories she helped choose seem bonded by a lack of that very tendency. There are as many new names here as familiar ones, among the latter are A.S. Byatt, William Trevor, T. Coraghessan Boyle, Evan S. Connell, William Kittredge, and Tim O’Brien. Standouts include Edith Pearlman’s “The Story,” in which a story of resistance accompanies one course of an annual dinner among friends, this time held at a new restaurant that, like the tale, recalls a different era; Ann Harleman’s “Meanwhile,” a heartbreakingly fragmented account—memos, flyers, crossword puzzles—of a couple trying to save love as one of them descends into the pit of multiple sclerosis; Douglas Light’s “Three Days. A Month. More,” a poetic account of two young Puerto Rican girls contemplating their heritage and overdue bills as they live alone in the apartment their mother has abandoned; an installment from Alice Munro (“Fathers”) about a young man’s experience with a neighbor girl’s hatred of her father and what this tells him of his own father; and the best of the bunch, Denis Johnson’s “Train Dreams,” a borderline novella of a man’s preindustrial life lived entirely in an apocryphal panhandle of northern Idaho. You get the sense that this latest volume, judging from the range of sources sometimes very small (The Idaho Review, Alaska Quarterly Review), is a much better sampling of literature from a single year than usual.

Overall, a highly talented lineup—and well worth the asking price.

Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2003

ISBN: 1-4000-3131-1

Page Count: 464

Publisher: Anchor

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE O. HENRY PRIZE STORIES 2019
edited by Laura Furman

- BOOK REVIEW
THE O. HENRY PRIZE STORIES 2018
edited by Laura Furman

- BOOK REVIEW
THE O. HENRY PRIZE STORIES 2017
edited by Laura Furman

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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

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GO SET A WATCHMAN
by Harper Lee

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NYT Readers Voting on Best Book of Past 125 Years

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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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.