Laura FurmanCritiques

One of the best short story collections I've read.

Reviewing anthologies is tough. Different authors have contributed different things. Some will appeal to some readers and others will not. The best a reader can hope for is a high quality anthologist/editor, a person who has selected a good variety while also including enough to appeal to your particular tastes.
When selecting an anthology, I tend toward those where the entries have been selected based on criteria of excellence, rather than taste or genre, and have been selected by a jury of editors, not just a single one. The O'Henry Prize anthologies include stories that had won the O'Henry Prize, a test of their quality. But they hasd also been previously published elsewhere. Thus, the original publication and the prize selection committee have both considered that the work is high uality and worthwhile.
Every year, I get the "Best American Short Stories of----" and "The Best Non-Required Reading of ----" for the same reasons that I selected the O'Henry Prize collection. Their contents have been selected for their high quality, both when they were originally published and when they were anthologized. The additional benefit of these anthologies is thet the stories selected fall into a variety of genre: short mysteries, historical fiction, surprise endings, sci-fi, etc.
Thie 2015 collection was a satisfying read, I did not like not fully read all the stories, but that is as it should be with a collection. Overall, the collection was interesting enough to make me want to read it all the way through, much as I would a novel, before I moved on to my next book.

I received an ARC copy of this short story collection from the publisher and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

O’Henry to me represents an American archetype in literature and it is interesting to note how that archetype has changed, or one can argue, no longer exists. When I think of classic American style in short stories a few authors come to mind: O’Henry, London, Irving, Fitzgerald, Poe and O’Connor. Each represents a particular time, region or style. London the pioneering spirit, Fitzgerald the jazz age, Irving the colonial period and along with Poe the supernatural, O’Connor the South. O’Henry is quintessentially American in locale as well as representative of a style of story. These stories are O’Henry award winners because they have a particular style that evokes his spirit. Interestingly, I found these stories to be quintessentially American. I sit here drinking coffee from Mexico, wearing a shirt made in India, typing on a computer made in China. These stories are like that too. Some take place in the United States but they involve immigrants and their own personal integration to this country; others involve Americans living or travelling abroad (and behaving badly) or naturalized Americans dealing with feelings of being an outsider to their culture of birth. They are who we are now and they all, like Paul Simon says, sing an American tune.

I think it is important to not provide too much detail on the stories because many of them pack a surprise or some other twist (in the O’Henry tradition) that would be spoiled by too much information. Here are my favorites. The very first story, the comical yet vaguely sinister “Finding Billy White Feather—which leaves the reader reeling and in no better position than the confused story teller starts this collection off on a very high note. “A Permanent Member of the Family,” “The Seals,” “Cabins,” “Word of Mouth,” and “The Golden Rule” deal with the types of events that are defining moments in a family history and are all deeply moving in their own way. The collection contains notes from the authors and I was not surprised to read that another favorite “A Permanent Member of the Family” happened pretty much as described in the story. As I was reading it I couldn’t help but think that it, or something just like it, happened to the author. Many of the above stories have a strong sense of autobiography about them.

I also enjoyed the stories that took place in other countries and the internal cultural commentary within them. Another favorite was “A Ride Out of Phrao” in which a naturalized American woman of middle eastern descent has moved to a small village in rural China. She never felt completely at home in America, yet it has become her home. She is very much an outsider in China but is adapting. Finally, she is culturally separated from her successful daughter. I found the story fascinating and quite moving.

Other stories that I enjoyed:

“About My Aunt”—fascinating story about two women and how one’s primary value is independence and the other is completely dependent on others, yet both appear content, set in the back drop of Hurricane Sandy.

“My Grandmother Tells Me A Story”—I couldn’t help thinking that I was very glad my grandmother never told me a story like that—a story that would change the way you look at her forever.

Even though I have highlighted a few stories, I have to say that the entire collection is first rate and I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who enjoys well-crafted literary fiction.

One of my goals for this year was to win an award for one of my short stories. Maybe an O. Henry Award is a bit ambitious, but when I stumbled across this anthology, I thought I might as well read what the competition was up to. That said, book read, I’m thinking I might focus my efforts on mystery story awards. It’s not that the stories in this book weren’t good, because they were, it’s just that with a short story, where an author has a very finite amount of time and space to make their impression, what resonates with me are stories that linger. By that I mean stories that I’m still thinking about days, weeks, months, sometimes even years later. I don’t feel that any of the stories in this anthology will linger with me.

This is, perhaps, (probably and most likely) a personal issue. Literature is writing about everyday life in a way that you strike a chord with the reader. You present something that they can relate to, something they identify with and thus make your impression, making the mundane memorable. In genre writing, such as mystery, you have the unfair advantage of crafting a plot that doesn’t necessarily have its roots planted in reality. Real life doesn’t impress me nearly as much as a plot twist that blindsides me, leaving me shocked and breathless. The last short story anthology I read was Eighteen by Jan Burke and I thought it was incredible. It’s been two months and a few of the stories are still as fresh in my mind as if I just read them. I can still recall most of them. I’d be hard pressed to remember any of the stories in this book next month. Again, my biased and personal opinion. Four stars.

Reviewing anthologies is tough. Different authors have contributed different things. Some will appeal to some readers and others will not. The best a reader can hope for is a high quality anthologist/editor, a person who has selected a good variety while also including enough to appeal to your particular tastes.
When selecting an anthology, I tend toward those where the entries have been selected based on criteria of excellence, rather than taste or genre, and have been selected by a jury of editors, not just a single one. The O'Henry Prize anthologies include stories that had won the O'Henry Prize, a test of their quality. But they hasd also been previously published elsewhere. Thus, the original publication and the prize selection committee have both considered that the work is high uality and worthwhile.
Every year, I get the "Best American Short Stories of----" and "The Best Non-Required Reading of ----" for the same reasons that I selected the O'Henry Prize collection. Their contents have been selected for their high quality, both when they were originally published and when they were anthologized. The additional benefit of these anthologies is thet the stories selected fall into a variety of genre: short mysteries, historical fiction, surprise endings, sci-fi, etc.
Thie 2015 collection was a satisfying read, I did not like not fully read all the stories, but that is as it should be with a collection. Overall, the collection was interesting enough to make me want to read it all the way through, much as I would a novel, before I moved on to my next book.

My thanks goes to Anchor Books and to the editor of the collection for the ARC via NetGalley.

I am a massive fan of the art of the short story in its every form, so this collection has been a real treat.
Before reading this, I had a vague idea that somewhere, something like the O. Henry Prize for short stories existed, but actually going through this year's carefully prepared volume made me aware of its significance.

Namely, this tradition, the way the awards process is organised, the entire institution of the O. Henry Prize nurtures the art of the short story in the English language most admirably. Not only does the publication promote and encourage lesser-known authors (you can't walk away from reading this without a brand new list of writers and titles to explore), but it also does an excellent job in supporting an incredibly large number of struggling literary magazines.

The selection of stories, at least in this installment, caters for all tastes they cover a myriad of themes presented in a variety of styles, so that every piece grabs you in its own way, and at least some of them are bound to stay with you long after you close the book.

Here are three of my favourites:

The Inheritors by Kristen Iskandrian details the strange and unlikely friendship that develops between two very different women working in a consignment shop; a story that leaves you mystified and transformed, curious for answers, yet privy to the esoteric beauty of the piece as it stands.

Opa-Locka by [a:Laura van den Berg|2741263|Laura van den Berg|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1369171913p2/2741263.jpg] immerses us in the adventures of two sisters who work as private detectives, unfolding in a bold, experimental (literary speaking) fashion their past and the reasons why they are sitting on a rooftop in the hot Florida sun.

Oh Shenandoah by [a:Maura Stanton|543546|Maura Stanton|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-ccc56e79bcc2db9e6cdcd450a4940d46.png] is built around the search for a new toilet seat in magical Venice, an incident based on a similar experience of the author's.

What is probably the best part is that we hear from everybody involved in the creation of the collection - the authors, the jurors, and the editor - and everybody displays a catching enthusiasm about their contribution to disseminating the well-written word.

To stop myself from saying that I'd be prepared to commit as many crimes as necessary in order to get my hands on as many volumes of O. Henry winners as possible, I'll regurgitate the words of the editor that best describe this collection: "The art of the short story is in good hands this year."

I really enjoy the O. Henry Prize Stories series. At least in the awards' current form, the work chosen is much less concerned with setting standards for a theoretical short story canon than showcasing a range of up-to-the-minute fiction and offering a snapshot of what interests contemporary writers at a given time. In this batch, the majority of the 20 featured stories build on how identity—social, racial, cultural, familial, sexual, and otherwise—forms and shifts... maybe that's all short stories, but the combination of varied cultures, eras, and experiences throws that area of exploration into slightly sharper relief. And as with previous installments in the series, this one was uneven in parts but never boring.

Standouts for me: Tessa Hadley's "Funny Little Snake," Sarah Hall's "Goodnight Nobody," Weike Wang's "Omakase," Caolinn Hughes's "Prime," Souvankham Thammavongsa's "Slingshot."

Standouts in this volume:

Mudlavia (Elizabeth Stuckey-French)
The Tutor (Nell Freudenberger)
Fantasy for Eleven Fingers (Ben Fountain)
Tea (Nancy Reisman)
The Drowned Woman (Frances de Pontes Peebles)
The Card Trick (Tessa Hadley)
What You Pawn I Will Redeem (Sherman Alexie)

I like the stories better than best American but their organization is awful. They discuss the stories in random order so you have to search for each author. I think next time I will follow the discussion order.

The O. Henry Prize Stories 2017 is a stunning collection of twenty short stories published in the past year in literary magazines in the U.S. and Canada. I noticed that Elizabeth McCracken, one of my favorite writers, was among the jurists, along with David Bradley, and Brad Watson, so I had high hopes and they were met. O. Henry is perhaps the most well-known short story writer of the United States. His The Gift of the Magi has defined the generosity of love for generations. The O. Henry Prize has fostered short stories ever since.

This year’s twenty stories take place all over the world. Some stories are quite long and others are short, though anything but sweet. Buttony is a very short story and seems sweet at the beginning, but only if you’re not paying attention. Nonetheless, the abrupt shift toward the end recalls the O. Henry tradition of a twist. I loved Floating Garden, particularly how the author carefully never named the country, giving the story a universality. Paddle to Canada is gloriously human, how stories have this subtext that changes as circumstances change. The Family Whistle broke my heart and I regretted that she did the right thing. I could go on, so many of these stories were just so wonderful

I enjoyed this collection of short stories in The O. Henry Prize Stories 2017. I think the diversity of voices and experiences is unmatched. There are stories of old age and youth, of wealth and poverty, of the now and the long ago, of privilege and the downside of power, from Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe and North America. The stories are alive with possibility and passion. The O. Henry Prize is all about promoting the art of the short story and these are short stories from the best of the best.

“Too Good To Be True,” Michelle Huneven
“Something for a Young Woman,” Genevieve Plunkett
“The Buddhist,” Alan Rossi
“Garments,” Tahmima Anam
“Protection,” Paola Peroni
“Night Garden,” Shruti Swamy
“A Cruelty,” Kevin Barry
“Floating Garden,” Mary La Chapelle
“The Trusted Traveler,” Joseph O’Neill
“Blue Dot,” Keith Eisner
“Lion,” Wil Weitzel
“Paddle to Canada,” Heather Monley
“A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness,” Jai Chakrabarti
“The Bride and the Street Party,” Kate Cayley
“Secret Lives of the Detainees,” Amit Majmudar
“Glory,” Lesley Nneka Arimah
“Mercedes Benz,” Martha Cooley
“The Reason Is Because,” Manuel Muñoz
“The Family Whistle,” Gerard Woodward
“Buttony,” Fiona McFarlane

The O. Henry Prize Stories 2017 will be released September 5th. I received an e-galley for review from the publisher via Edelweiss

The O. Henry Prize Stories 2017 at Knopf Doubleday, via Penguin Random House
Laura Furman author site
The official site of The O. Henry Prize Stories
O. Henry at American Literature

https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2017/08/27/9780525432500/

A good selection of modern short stories. I loved several of the stories, could have lived without a few of them, but overall good stuff.

Quite sad and depressing.

Standouts in this volume:

Mudlavia (Elizabeth Stuckey-French)
The Tutor (Nell Freudenberger)
Fantasy for Eleven Fingers (Ben Fountain)
Tea (Nancy Reisman)
The Drowned Woman (Frances de Pontes Peebles)
The Card Trick (Tessa Hadley)
What You Pawn I Will Redeem (Sherman Alexie)

(I haven't even managed to read my O. Henry Prize Stories 2014 and already 2015 has come out. I'm never going to catch up.)

I like short stories. They're my potato chips or candy, snacking for my brain (even the serious short stories that should be more like a lump in my stomach). I pick up short story books or request them as ARCs because I like reading them. That's why I asked for The O. Henry Prize Stories 2015, okay Introduction? I don't need twenty pages of an English professor rah-rah-brigading me about short stories, then summarizing each story, then explaining to me why each story merits inclusion in the collection. Just let me at the stories! I hate introductions.

So let's get to the stories. Hooray! Stories! But they are American. I always struggle to articulate my feelings towards American fiction. The best I've ever come up with is insular. There's a self-importance too, but no one that is mean-spirited. It's not bragging or even humble-bragging. But it's whatever comes with the knowledge that due to population and money and global positioning and power: that being American can mean forcing an influence on the rest of the English speaking world that say me, as a Canadian, cannot force. The stories here vary between US-born to those who have chosen (or are in the process of choosing, as in Manuel Muñoz's "The Happiest Girl in the Whole USA") to locate themselves in the States, and this tone of American-ness washes the stories out. Even the ones that are stylistically different (the first person plural of Naira Kuzmich's "The Kingsley Drive Chorus", the fairy tale world of Elizabeth McCracken's "Birdsong from the Radio", the East Africa of Lionel Shriver's "Kilifi Creek") are still similar. One might believe that these were all written by the same author, each story investigating the subtle. It's like there was a memo in 2015: Forget what they told you in high school about short stories. No changes, epiphanies, or surprises. I can't say there are a lot of surprises here. There are a lot of abrupt endings in surprise's place. Many of these stories simply stop in another shared stylistic quirk. I can't be satisfied with a story that simply stops. I feel ripped off.

I should also crown my favourite, simply because the three person jury each wrote a little paragraph at the end regarding their favourite and I guess that's the thing one is supposed to do in collections like this. I'll pick the fairy tale monstrousness of Elizabeth McCracken's "Birdsong from the Radio". That one didn't need to be an American story, in the way some of the other stories needed to be set in the States or inhabited by US-ians. It chose to be an American story. That made me like it best.

The O. Henry Prize Stories 2015 edited by Laura Furman went on sale September 15, 2015.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.½

This is a varied and excellent anthology collecting twenty short stories, the best stories published in an American or Canadian periodical in 2014 according to the O’Henry Prize series editor. And I don’t know if they’re really the best, but in my opinion, over half of them are very good, a couple of them are amazing, and none of them is bad. Quite an achievement. Most of the writers included in this book were new to me (although I had read one of these stories before), but in most of the cases they have turned out to be a pleasant surprise, although my two absolute favorites stories are by two established authors: “The Seals”, by Lydia Davis, a story about grief and how we mourn and remember our loved ones, and “A Permanent Member of the Family”, by Russell Banks, an autobiographical story based on the author’s own divorce, a nuanced and heartbreaking story that lingers in your mind.
I’m sure this anthology will be easily enjoyed by any lover of good fiction, and especially by those, like me, who are fans of short fiction.

There are thirteen short stories in Drinking with the Cook. Here are two of them:

Drinking with the Cook - Peggy and Don have a weird relationship. While they have been dating and seem quite serious they never really discuss anything of importance. Right away you can tell they aren't meant to be together, especially when Peggy gives up her city apartment to live with Don in the country. She doesn't even know if he wants her there. She is a fish out of water but blind to how wrong the situation really is. "I wish there was a way to bank fear and draw on it only when necessary" (p 19).

Hagalund - is a story for which I needed a map to guide me. Miriam, while on vacation in Colorado with her husband and son, reminisces about her time as a single girl spending a winter in Sweden. It's during the Vietnam War, a time when no one trusted anyone else - not completely. "But now that was over, and I was waiting for the next thing to happen though it was happening already" (p 155).

It's been a while since I read any short story, and I felt this was a good way to reintroduce myself to them. I felt conflicted toward a lot of the stories though, and rating them was difficult. Some were disturbing or weird, some had a great story but indifferent writing, some (those I didn't finish) had a boring story and uninteresting writing. A few were really beautiful, and many were thought-provoking. All were sad, two of them almost unbearably so.

After reading a few stories, I was already starting to forget them (I tend to forget books at an alarming speed, most of the time when I finish a novel I have already forgotten the beginning), so I started a log with a rating for each story and a short note to help me remember, and possibly draw from this a list of authors or magazines I'd like to read more of.

Ratings go from 1 (three stories I didn't bother to finish) to 5. Interestingly, three of the stories were initially published in the New Yorker magazine, and those are among the weakest: two of them I didn't finish, and the third I gave a rating of two, which was especially disappointing because this story is by Alice Munro, who won a Nobel prize. I had never read anything by her before, and her name was one of the reasons I bought this book. The story in her story (if you see what I mean) was good and should have been really moving, but it was told in an incredibly flat and boring way.

For what it's worth, here is the list of the stories with my ratings:

Your Duck Is My Duck - Deborah Eisenberg - Fence - 5
Sugarcane - Derek Palacio - The Kenyon Review - 4
The Summer People - Kelly Link - Tin House - 3
Leaving Maverley - Alice Munro - The New Yorker - 2
White Carnations - Polly Rosenwaike - Prairie Schooner - 3
Sail - Tash Aw - A Public Space -1
Anecdotes - Ann Beattie - Granta - 4
Lay My Head - L. Annette Binder - Fairy Tale Review - 5
He Knew - Donald Antrim - The New Yorker - 1
The Visitor - Asako Serizawa - The Antioch Review - 4
Where Do You Go? - Samar Farah Fitzgerald - New England Review - 3
Aphrodisiac - Ruth Prawer Jhabvala - The New Yorker - 1
Two Opinions - Joan Silber - Epoch - 3
They Find the Drowned - Melinda Moustakis - Hobart: another literary journal - 5
The Mexican - George McCormick - Epoch - 4
Tiger - Nalini Jones - One Story - 3
Pérou - Lily Tuck - Epoch - 4
Sinkhole - Jamie Quatro - Ploughshares - 3
The History of Girls - Ayşe Papatya Bucak - Witness - 4
The Particles - Andrea Barrett - Tin House - 5

The stories here skew dark: young folks in peril, missing and dead parents, snake handlers, and guns figure prominently in four out of 19 (and slightly less so in at least a couple of others).

In the judges' discussion of their favorite stories at the back of the book, Tash says, in reference to Mark Haddon's "The Gun," "You never know exactly how to react, for there's never a comfort zone." And I'd extend that to most of the stories in the collection. In a good way, mind you—I loved how off-kilter so many of them were. This was a fun collection, even by O. Henry standards, which tend to be weird and good as it is.

I thought Kristen Iskandrian's "The Inheritors" was absolutely outstanding, but I don't doubt there's a favorite for everyone in this collection.½

There is something refreshing about reading a good book of short stories. It is different than reading a book of fiction and different from reading a book of nonfiction. Like eating a tray of delicious and varied horderves. You may not like every single story but with this many to choose from and with this great variety and quality, you will enjoy a lot.

I'm calling it quits on this one. I tried to like it, but after reading more than a quarter of the stories in this collection, not one of them moved me at all. I can picture all the authors, sitting at home, dressed in black turtlenecks and hunched over their keyboards, maybe smoking thin cigarettes. They just have that literary coolness to them that (to me) winds up just plain inaccessible.

I tried, I failed. What else is new?

One of the best collections in the series.

A terrific collection of essays, poems, letters and quotes about books and reading from such folks as Alan Bennett, Zora Neale Hurston, Tobias Wolff, Jane Austen, Eudora Welty, Anthony Trollope, Frederick Douglass, Richard Wright, Miep Gies . . . well, the list goes on. It's a well-thought out collection, beginning with a section on "The Young Reader" and then moving through "Sorts of Readers," "Reading Aloud", "Reading Ahead", Queen Lear," and "The Privileged Pleasure".

I do think parts might have been shortened. I found myself losing interest a wee bit in the "Reading Aloud" section. However, the "Queen Lear" section was terrific. It was prefaced by this brief statement: "In times of difficulty, readers often turn to literature to understand the wordless world around them. It is also the case that sometimes reading leads to more, and worse, trouble." The section is named for an essay by David Denby, in which he examines King Lear in light of what it has to teach him about his relationship to his supremely difficult mother. It's a fantastic piece, and one which I (having a difficult mother of my own) found wonderfully inspiring and useful.

Although I had read some of the pieces before - such as those by Richard Wright (a beautiful examination on how books awakening him), Frederick Douglass and others, I didn't mind revisiting them, as I might any old friend. Then, too, Leslie Marmon Silko's piece, taken from "Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit" highlighted by being lifted out of the longer work, looked utterly new and surprising to my eyes, although I read the book from which it was taken years ago.

Of course, for someone who loves books, reading about how much other people love them, how they came to discover this love, and what it has meant to their development and there lives, is always a hugely satisfying pleasure, since one likes to feel one belongs in such great company. Books and reading are an open invitation to join the Great Conversation.

I suggest the interested reader (and I hope there would be many of you), let this book rest in a place in your home where you'll pick it up often, reading a piece today, another tomorrow, paced at the level of your curiosity. Skip if you feel like, but give each piece a chance. You might be surprised by your discoveries.

OMG, AWFUL!! Took me 4 years to finish this and it was torture :(½

Most of these stories have appeared in other "best-of" collections covering the same time period; in particular there's a ton of overlap with Best American Short Stories 2009. Even skipping the ones I'd already read, this was a slog. The contributor's comments in the back are interesting, but the jurors' comments are surprisingly brief and generic-seeming to me. Maybe there really are only 30 or 35 really great short stories published in a given year, but I hate to think that, and I hate to think that if it's true, these are they. (The Adiche, Galgut, and Munro stories are exceptions; though I love Brad Watson, I think the story of his that was chosen isn't one of his better recent stories.)

I picked up this short story collection because one of the authors was a professor I had in college. Because this is a collection, I can't really summarize or give a "star" rating, but I will say that even when I didn't particularly like what happened in a story, one of the reasons I enjoy short stories is that I can appreciate the form quite separate from what goes on in the narrative. Did the story make me think or surprise me? Did anything stay with me so that I had to wait a bit before moving on to the next one? With that in mind, "Mudder Tongue" by Brian Evenson, "The Gift of Years" by Vu Tran, and "The Scent of Cinnamon" by Charles Lambert stood out to me. It's a pretty eclectic mix, and definitely worth a look.