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
As she seeks to repair bridges, Cat awakens anger and treachery in the hearts of those she once betrayed. Making amends,...
Before sobriety, Catherine "Cat" Coombs had it all: fun friends, an exciting job, and a love affair with alcohol. Until she blacked out one more time and woke up in a stranger’s bed.
By that time, “having it all” had already devolved into hiding the extent of her drinking from everyone she cared about, including herself. Luckily for Cat, the stranger turned out to be Jason Halliwell, a rather delicious television director marking three years, eight months, and 69 days of sobriety. Inspired by Jason—or rather, inspired by the prospect of a romantic relationship with this handsome hunk—Cat joins him at AA meetings and embarks on her own journey toward clarity. But sobriety won’t work until Cat commits to it for herself. Their relationship is tumultuous, as Cat falls off the wagon time and again. Along the way, Cat discovers that the cold man she grew up endlessly failing to please was not her real father, and with his death, her mother’s secret escapes. So she heads for Nantucket, where she meets her drunken dad and two half sisters—one boisterously welcoming and the other sulkily suspicious—and where she commits an unforgivable blunder. Years later, despairing of her persistent relapses, Jason has left Cat, taking their daughter with him. Finally, painfully, Cat gets clean. Green (Saving Grace, 2014, etc.) handles grim issues with a sure hand, balancing light romance with tense family drama. She unflinchingly documents Cat’s humiliations under the influence and then traces her commitment to sobriety. Simultaneously masking the motivations of those surrounding our heroine, Green sets up a surprising karmic lesson.
As she seeks to repair bridges, Cat awakens anger and treachery in the hearts of those she once betrayed. Making amends, like addiction, may endanger her future.Pub Date: June 23, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-04734-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 1, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
This novel began as a reworking of W.W. Jacobs' horror classic "The Monkey's Paw"—a short story about the dreadful outcome when a father wishes for his dead son's resurrection. And King's 400-page version reads, in fact, like a monstrously padded short story, moving so slowly that every plot-turn becomes lumberingly predictable. Still, readers with a taste for the morbid and ghoulish will find unlimited dark, mortality-obsessed atmosphere here—as Dr. Louis Creed arrives in Maine with wife Rachel and their two little kids Ellie and Gage, moving into a semi-rural house not far from the "Pet Sematary": a spot in the woods where local kids have been burying their pets for decades. Louis, 35, finds a great new friend/father-figure in elderly neighbor Jud Crandall; he begins work as director of the local university health-services. But Louis is oppressed by thoughts of death—especially after a dying student whispers something about the pet cemetery, then reappears in a dream (but is it a dream) to lead Louis into those woods during the middle of the night. What is the secret of the Pet Sematary? Well, eventually old Jud gives Louis a lecture/tour of the Pet Sematary's "annex"—an old Micmac burying ground where pets have been buried. . .and then reappeared alive! So, when little Ellie's beloved cat Church is run over (while Ellie's visiting grandfolks), Louis and Jud bury it in the annex—resulting in a faintly nasty resurrection: Church reappears, now with a foul smell and a creepy demeanor. But: what would happen if a human corpse were buried there? That's the question when Louis' little son Gage is promptly killed in an accident. Will grieving father Louis dig up his son's body from the normal graveyard and replant it in the Pet Sematary? What about the stories of a previous similar attempt—when dead Timmy Baterman was "transformed into some sort of all-knowing daemon?" Will Gage return to the living—but as "a thing of evil?" He will indeed, spouting obscenities and committing murder. . .before Louis must eliminate this child-demon he has unleashed. Filled out with overdone family melodrama (the feud between Louis and his father-in-law) and repetitious inner monologues: a broody horror tale that's strong on dark, depressing chills, weak on suspense or surprise—and not likely to please the fans of King's zestier, livelier terror-thons.
Pub Date: Nov. 4, 1983
ISBN: 0743412281
Page Count: 420
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1983
BOOK TO SCREEN
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