An unblinking look at regional ills and richness that suffers from a dearth of African-American voices.
Culled from successive annual collections of New Stories from the South, these strong selections by novelist Anne Tyler stretch from 1996 to 2005.
The winners here have jumped through several editorial hoops, from initial publication in literary journals like the New Yorker and Ploughshares, to further selection as the best Southern fiction—not an easy quality to define, admits keen-witted, no-nonsense Tyler in her introduction. Though many of the stories will be familiar to readers, they are no less pleasing. Lee Smith’s masterly “The Happy Memories Club” (from the Atlantic Monthly), about a feisty nursing-home inmate determined to resist the censorship of her lifetime of memories, is one of several tales tackling head-on the sad, nearly squalid endings of cherished relatives. Some of these elders carry with them the edged legacy of racism and Confederate honor. Pam Durban’s “Gravity” treats a mother’s embarrassing, repetitive stories of her longtime black servant; Mamie has been dead for 14 years but still provides a beacon for the confused Charleston lady. In Gregory Sanders’s “Good Witch, Bad Witch,” a Houston woman on her last legs redeems herself of “compartmentalized” racism by bestowing a final largesse on the “nigra man” who takes care of her lawn. Lucia Nevai’s “Faith Healer” shows Northerners getting a grand Southern reception when a divorced couple seeking a Tennessee faith healer arrive at Willie Mae’s house in Pikeville—and the Pittsburgh husband’s own racist views are sorely tested. Other outsiders, a family of Sudanese in Stephanie Soileau’s “The Boucherie,” share a cultural moment with their Louisiana neighbors when a wayward cow has to be butchered, under Muslim law. There’s also plenty of hardy, run-on, vernacular storytelling, as in Clyde Edgerton’s “Debra’s Flap and Snap” and Max Steele’s hilarious, hair-raising tale of unspeakable family secrets, “The Unripe Heart.”
An unblinking look at regional ills and richness that suffers from a dearth of African-American voices.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2005
ISBN: 1-56512-470-7
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2005
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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