Though more radical narrative strategies aren’t represented, the selection is of such consistently high quality that almost...
Among the 20 competitors in what novelist Patchett (Bel Canto, 2001, etc.) terms “the short story Olympics,” there are plenty of worthy contenders for the gold medal.
As usual, this annual anthology mixes stories from perennial favorites (including former guest editors Tobias Wolff and Ann Beattie, and the obligatory and always welcome Alice Munro) with selections from small-circulation literary journals, highlighting the range of possibility within the genre. Where a short-story collection by a single author tends to repeat patterns, rhythms and themes, there’s a much greater sense of serendipity and surprise here. Whether because of the luck of this year’s draw or the preferences of the guest editor, the narratives are typically more straightforward than experimental, frequently first person, strong on the storytelling verities of plot, character and dialogue. Many of them (including Donna Tartt’s “The Ambush,” Maxine Swann’s “Secret” and Benjamin Percy’s “Refresh, Refresh”) concern adolescent initiation and rites of passage. Though all of the writers are North American, the settings extend from a Korean island resort (Paul Yoon’s “Once the Shore”) and dog racing in Beijing (Jack Livings’s “The Dog”) to the Bosnian poetry community (Aleksandar Hemon’s “The Conductor”) and an American’s return to his family’s native Latvia (“A New Gravestone for an Old Grave”). Many of the stories tend toward the short side, but the last and longest is the most wickedly funny, as Beattie lampoons the bi-coastal memorial services of an esteemed painter turned alcoholic, pornographic comics illustrator. The shortest and strangest is Robert Coover’s “Grandmother’s Nose,” in which a young girl (in another rite of passage) comes to terms with death in a fairy-tale subversion of “Little Red Riding Hood.” In one of the most inventive, Katherine Bell’s “The Casual Car Pool” finds a sky-diving parachutist caught on a bridge, disrupting rush hour and complicating the lives of three strangers sharing a ride to qualify for the car-pool lane.
Though more radical narrative strategies aren’t represented, the selection is of such consistently high quality that almost any of these stories could be some reader’s favorite.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2006
ISBN: 0-618-54351-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2006
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
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
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
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.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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