Literary culture is in good hands in this top-shelf collection.
A decade and a half after its inception, the annual “nonrequired reading” continues along its quirky path—so quirky at times, in fact, that the editors want us to know that “no one was on drugs when we put it together.”
Founded by novelist Dave Eggers in 2002, the Nonrequired Reading has a delightful twist baked right into it: It’s judged by high school students, and the proceeds go to 826 National, a cluster of writing and tutoring centers around the country. By guest editor Heti’s account, the process of working with those young people was as important as the product; says one student judge, “we’re not worried about analyzing the pieces—we’re not worried about picking apart every motif because we’ll have to write an essay on it.” It should be said, on that note, that the product doesn’t suffer by comparison to older kin such as the Pushcart annual; in addition, the BANR volumes, drawing from a wide pool of reading, have tended to emphasize a welcome diversity along all lines as something more than a polite nod. The themes are often quite grown-up, too. A story early on, for instance, by the Chinese writer Qiu Miaojin, features alcohol, albeit alcohol ejected from the body in ways teenagers will understand, and same-sex lovemaking, accompanied by lashings of angst. From the late journalist Alex Tizon comes an essay that ignited a storm of controversy when it appeared in the Atlantic, recounting a dark family secret: “I had a family, a career, a house in the suburbs—the American dream. And then I had a slave.” Other stories and poems tend to less fraught but still engaging topics. A standout among many high points is Annie Baker’s decidedly centrifugal play, “The Antipodes,” which goes from family drama to horror as a character realizes that the fence of a neighbor’s house “is actually made out of bones and on the top of every post is a human skull.”
Literary culture is in good hands in this top-shelf collection.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-328-46581-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Mariner/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
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.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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