What makes a short story tick? This collection doesn’t offer a definitive curriculum, but it does contain plenty of good...
Latest installment of the esteemed annual award volume, with some sterling examples of short fiction winningly—in all senses—executed.
One doesn’t envy the O. Henry Prize judges their work, given that “all stories originally written in the English language and published in an American or Canadian periodical are eligible for consideration.” Of the many hundreds or even thousands of candidates thus in the running, the annual volume finds room for just 20. It’s small wonder that top-tier practitioners of the form such as Elizabeth McCracken and Russell Banks should be among the winners, but, to Furman and company’s credit, there’s room for relative newcomers as well. Among the highlights of the volume, in that regard, is Dina Nayeri’s story “A Ride out of Phrao,” which proves the point of Wallace Stegner’s observation that American literature is one of movement even as it serves up some sly humor: “At the next meeting of her church’s widows group—an organization she joined despite the very alive state of both her ex-husbands—Shirin told the other ladies that she had quit her job because of exhaustion.” It’s more than exhaustion that causes Shirin to leave the comforts of Cedar Rapids for the unknown wonders of Chiang Mai and beyond, though. Judge Michael Parker writes that, among other criteria, he “need[s] to be invested in all that is at stake for the characters,” information that an expert writer will share out carefully, as Lynn Sharon Schwartz does in her story “The Golden Rule,” a deft study of a hard-to-like subject (“She was mean-spirited, bigoted”) who becomes more interesting in death. Winning image for the year, courtesy of Emma Törzs: “She was a sharp-toothed heeler with the erratic territorialism of a cokehead landlord.”
What makes a short story tick? This collection doesn’t offer a definitive curriculum, but it does contain plenty of good case studies.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-87231-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Anchor
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Collins invokes both Voltaire and Defoe here, and she forges an unlikely but sadly harmonic connection with both these...
There’s betrayal, depravity, pseudoscience, forbidden love, drug addiction, white supremacy, and, oh yes, a murder mystery with tightly wound knots to unravel.
The citizenry of 1826 London has worked itself into near apoplexy over the sensational trial of “The Mulatta Murderess,” aka Frances Langton, a Jamaican servant accused of brutally stabbing her white employers to death. Though caught on the night of the murders covered with blood, Frances cannot remember what happened and thus cannot say whether or not she is guilty. “For God’s sake, give me something I can save your neck with,” her lawyer pleads. And so Frannie, who, despite having been born into slavery, became adept at reading and writing, tries to find her own way to the truth the only way she can: By writing her life’s story from its beginnings on a West Indian plantation called Paradise whose master, John Langton, is a vicious sadist. He uses Frannie for sex and as a “scribe” taking notes on his hideous experiments into racial difference using skulls, blood, and even skin samples. After a fire destroys much of his plantation, Langton takes Frannie to London and makes her a gift to George Benham, an urbane scientist engaged in the same dubious race-science inquiries. Frannie’s hurt over her abandonment is soon dispelled by her fascination with Benham’s French-born wife, Marguerite, a captivating beauty whose lively wit and literary erudition barely conceal despondency that finds relief in bottles of laudanum. A bond forms between mistress and servant that swells and tightens into love, leading to a tempest of misunderstanding, deceit, jealousy, and, ultimately, death. Collins’ debut novel administers a bold and vibrant jolt to both the gothic and historical fiction genres, embracing racial and sexual subtexts that couldn’t or wouldn’t have been imagined by its long-ago practitioners. Her evocations of early-19th-century London and antebellum Jamaica are vivid and, at times, sensuously graphic. Most of all, she has created in her title character a complex, melancholy, and trenchantly observant protagonist; too conflicted in motivation, perhaps, to be considered a heroine but as dynamic and compelling as any character conceived by a Brontë sister.
Collins invokes both Voltaire and Defoe here, and she forges an unlikely but sadly harmonic connection with both these enlightenment heroes in her gripping, groundbreaking debut.Pub Date: May 21, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-285189-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
Weirdly compelling and compellingly weird.
A story of taxidermy, political intrigue, and love between men from the author of The Convalescent (2009).
The story begins at the beginning—or close enough. It begins with the birth—or close enough—of our planet. Several eons pass over the next few pages until a Victorian naturalist traveling in Africa encounters his first aardvark. Then another story begins, and in this story, “you”—these sections are narrated in the second person—are an up-and-coming young Republican legislator with a Ronald Reagan fetish. These two stories become intertwined when an aardvark specimen Sir Richard Ostlet sent to his friend and lover Titus Downing, a taxidermist, is delivered to Alexander Paine Wilson’s D.C. town house. As both narratives unfold, it becomes clear that Wilson and Downing have a great deal in common. The taxidermist is compelled to be circumspect about his relationship with Ostlet because what they do together is an actual crime in 19th-century England. For Wilson, coming out is impossible not only because of his political party, but also because he doesn’t even define himself as gay. Yes, he has frequent and very enjoyable sexual encounters with a philanthropist named Greg Tampico, but they’re just two straight guys who happen to enjoy sex with other men. The aardvark serves as a sort of intermediary between these two men and their lovers. Resurrecting this strange beast allows Downing to stay connected with Ostlet even after Ostlet has abandoned him and married a woman. When a FedEx truck dumps this selfsame aardvark on Wilson’s doorstep, he sees it as a message from Greg—one that the congressman will spend most of the novel struggling to decipher. In addition to providing a lot of detail about the art of taxidermy, Anthony offers meditations on the interconnectedness of all things. There are also ghosts and Nazis, in case all that isn’t enough.
Weirdly compelling and compellingly weird.Pub Date: March 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-316-53615-8
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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