That rarest and most refreshing sort of short story anthology: an eye-opener.
Gripping anthology of the unexpected from a cabal of A-list authors—but don’t look for their names in the table of contents.
Inspired by a demolition-derby driver who always won because he drove like he had nothing to lose, editor Parent (Turning Stones, 1996, etc.) cajoled a batch of star scribblers, from Michael Connelly and Alice Sebold to Sebastian Junger and Rosie O’Donnell, to contribute short stories anonymously, freeing them from the sometimes weighty expectations their names can bring. The results run the gamut from stunningly good to just plain okay to embarrassing. Of the middle category are such page-fillers as “An Eye for an Eye,” a portrait of a strained marriage that’s as finely crafted as it is bloodless and rote. “A Country Like No Other” is something quite different. It follows a pair of young American journalists through the ragged edges of a West African conflict packed full of everyday horror and the banality of evil. The story’s world-weariness somehow feels fresh, as though the naïve writer and his jaundiced, cynical buddy weren’t a trope as old as the hills. Another standout is “Wonderland,” which seems to have Alice Sebold’s name all over it. In this sharp shock of a piece, a shallow New York fashion magazine editor recollects her college affair with a Puerto Rican janitor and the tragedy that brought her and the man’s young daughter together. Simultaneously wistful, hateful, funny, honest and utterly self-serving, it’s a damning portrait of class prejudice that any writer would be smart to want to claim as her own.
That rarest and most refreshing sort of short story anthology: an eye-opener.Pub Date: June 14, 2005
ISBN: 1-4000-6264-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
Whitehead skillfully orchestrates these noirish particulars together with an enormity of technical-mechanical detail and...
A dizzyingly-high-concept debut of genuine originality, despite its indebtedness to a specific source, ironically echoes and amusingly inverts Ralph Ellison’s classic Invisible Man.
In a deftly plotted mystery and quest tale that’s also a teasing intellectual adventure, Whitehead traces the continuing education of Lila Mae Watson, the first black woman graduate of the Institute for Vertical Transport and thus first of her race and gender to be employed by the Department of Elevator Inspectors. In a “famous city” that appears to be a future New York, Lila Mae compiles a perfect safety record working as an “Intuitionist” inspector who, through meditation, “senses” the condition of the elevators she’s assigned. But after an episode of “total freefall” in one of “her” elevators leads to an elaborate investigation, Lila Mae is drawn into conflict with one of the Elevator Guild’s “Empiricists,” those who, unlike Intuitionists, focus their attention on literal mechanical failures. Furthermore, it’s an election year for the Guild, pitting Intuitionist candidate Orville Lever against crafty Empiricist Frank Chancre, who has surreptitiously enlisted the muscle of mobster Johnny Shush. Hoping to escape these distractions while proving herself innocent, Lila Mae goes “underground” and makes some dangerous discoveries about the ideas and the life of Intuitionism’s founder, James Fulton, a visionary known to have been working on a “black box” that would revolutionize elevator construction and alter the nature of urban life forever. Lila Mae’s odyssey involves her further with such mysterious characters as Fulton’s former housemaid and lover, her circumspect “house nigger” colleague Pompey, a charmer named Natchez, who claims he’s Fulton’s nephew, and sinister Internal Affairs investigator Bart Arbogast.
Whitehead skillfully orchestrates these noirish particulars together with an enormity of technical-mechanical detail and resonant meditations on social and racial issues, bringing all into a many-leveled narrative equally effective as detective story and philosophical novel. Ralph Ellison would be proud.Pub Date: Dec. 29, 1998
ISBN: 0-385-49299-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Anchor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1998
Endless clever details and suspenseful plotting make this speculative-fiction debut an addictive treat.
How far will our addiction to screens and our obsession with social media go? And how much will we pay for it?
The bill is large indeed in Angelo’s first novel. In alternating narratives beginning in 2015 and 2051, she creates two chilling versions of celebrity culture in techno-hell. It all starts with a post on a website called Lady-ish written by staff blogger Orla Cadden. “Sooo What Does The World’s Most Expensive Brow Gel Actually Do? One Instagram It Girl Finds Out” is the first of a series of pieces Orla concocts (down to scrubbing the writing off a tube of Maybelline for the photo shoot) to boost the profile of a wannabe Kardashian type—actually her roommate, Floss, whose drive to be famous in the absence of any talent or notable quality runs over everything in sight for the course of the novel. In the 2051 plot, we meet Marlow, a young wife in Constellation, California, a closed town populated with government-selected celebrities devoted entirely to the production of a reality show watched by everyone who does not live there. “Is it me or does Mar have kinda chubby armpits,” asks one of Marlow’s more than 12 million followers, watching her stretch before getting out of bed in the morning. “NOOOOOOO NO ONE WANTS TO WATCH ANOTHER PILL AD—PUT THE MARLOW FLAMINGO SMACKDOWN BACK ON!!!!!” screams another when Marlow gets upset with her network-issued storyline and throws a fit. Both the 2015 and 2051 plots revolve around a mysterious event called the Spill, which feels somewhat less original and interesting than the buildup to its reveal. However, the joy of the details continues all the way to a denouement in Atlantis (formerly Atlantic City), where the relationships we have begun to suspect between the characters of the two plotlines are untangled and confirmed.
Endless clever details and suspenseful plotting make this speculative-fiction debut an addictive treat.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-525-83626-8
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Graydon House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
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