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NEW STORIES FROM THE SOUTH

Name: NEW STORIES FROM THE SOUTH
Author: Shannon Ravenel
ISBN: 1-56512-375-1

THE YEAR’S BEST, 2002

edited by Shannon Ravenel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 13, 2002

Ravenel is one of the most resourceful and intelligent editors in the business, and this entertaining 17th installment is...

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Several excitingly original stories from new and recently emergent writers make this now-venerable annual a must for readers who mean to keep up with contemporary short fiction.

The volume gets off to a rocky start with novelist Larry Brown’s meandering, pointless preface (which really ought to have been scrapped). But it strikes gold with its first entry, playwright Romulus Linney’s beautifully structured, compellingly detailed story (“Tennessee”) of an elderly country woman’s survival of hardship, duplicity, and inexorably changing times. Other veteran writers include Max Steele, whose anecdotal “The Unripe Heart” smoothly conveys the confusion of a distracted preadolescent’s wary relationship with his “crazy” menopausal mother; Russell Banks, who limns in “The Outer Banks” a retired couple’s unspoken shared apprehension of their own fate as they deal with the death of their dog; and Doris Betts, at her nerve-grating best in the tense tale (“Aboveground”) of a grieving mother’s conflicted lingering reactions to the murder of her teenaged daughter. Pieces by newly familiar writers include Dwight Allen’s nostalgic, richly comic remembrance of a garrulous eccentric family’s misadventures (“End of the Steam Age”); Lucia Nevai’s sure-handed portrayal of a troubled marriage and a terminal illness “treated” by a forthright “Faith Healer”; and Bill Roorbach’s wonderful “Big Bend,” whose original premise matches a septuagenarian widower working for the National Park Service with a married amateur ornithologist, in a muted romantic comedy that features some irresistible dialogue exchanges (e.g., “The flesh is weak. . . . The flesh has a job to do”). The best discoveries include Aaron Gwyn’s somber, involving depiction (“Of Falling”) of a luckless “survivor” of numerous accidents who sees in the entire shape of his life the fact of his mortality; Corey Mesler’s racy Faustian tale (“The Growth and Death of Buddy Gardner”) of a ’60s blues artist’s supposed “pact with the devil”; and George Singleton’s very funny “Show-and-Tell,” about a schoolboy employed by his divorced father in a devious campaign to romance the boy’s teacher.

Ravenel is one of the most resourceful and intelligent editors in the business, and this entertaining 17th installment is one of her most pleasing productions.

Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2002

ISBN: 1-56512-375-1

Page Count: 344

Publisher: Algonquin

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2002

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
NEW STORIES FROM THE SOUTH
edited by Shannon Ravenel

- BOOK REVIEW
NEW STORIES FROM THE SOUTH
edited by Shannon Ravenel

- BOOK REVIEW
NEW STORIES FROM THE SOUTH
edited by Shannon Ravenel

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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.

Pub Date: May 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-345-45073-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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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.