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THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES 1994

Despite some real snoozers, a solid, generally somber sampling of today's established short story writers. This annual collection (edited by former Ticknor & Fields editor Kenison) is what IBM once was in corporate America: steady, reliable, an organ of the establishment (i.e., the New Yorker), with few surprises for conservative investors—and never mind Apple (i.e., the Pushcart Prize Annual) racing off with a newer, better, funkier product line. Credit Tobias Wolff (In Pharaoh's Army, p. 1113) with letting in a few rays of innovation, although much of the book remains heavy slogging. The collection is weighted with depictions of family dynamics during times of death and separation, including Sherman Alexie's bleak tale of a poor Native American traveling to retrieve his father's body (``This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona''), Alice Elliott Dark's haunting story of a 33-year-old man moving back in with his suburban parents in order to die quietly from AIDS (``In the Gloaming''), David Gates's mind- numbingly boring presentation of a stroke victim's world view (``The Mail Lady''), and Christopher Tilghman's overwrought, turgid depiction of a couple's trauma watching their infant son die of cystic fibrosis (``Things Left Undone''). Humor is at a minimum here, with the exception of Stuart Dybek's brief meditation on not having sex in ``We Didn't'' and Jim Shepard's laugh-out-loud tale of a bumbling professional baseball player in the early '50s, ``Batting Against Castro.'' The few gems offer striking voices, namely those of the rambling, drug-addled narrator who tries to come to terms with his father's long-ago death in Barry Hannah's ``Nicodemus Bluff,'' of a brutally honest, fatalistic AIDS doctor who visits his sister at a mental hospital in Thom Jones's ``Cold Snap,'' and of a dam keeper, the narrator of Tony Earley's ``The Prophet From Jupiter,'' who jumbles history with raw, immediate emotions as he tells of his wife being impregnated by another man. Mostly safe, but with enough danger and excitement to make it worthwhile.

Pub Date: Nov. 3, 1994

ISBN: 0-395-68103-0

Page Count: 396

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.

"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

Pub Date: June 15, 1951

ISBN: 0316769177

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951

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MAGIC HOUR

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.

Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

Pub Date: March 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-345-46752-3

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005

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