The state of the art, and required reading for all students of contemporary writing.
Henderson’s annual labor-of-love anthology turns 48.
For nearly half a century, the Pushcart Prize volumes have served not just as showcases for exemplary writing but also as mirrors of their time: In one stretch everyone seemed to write like Raymond Carver, in another like Annie Proulx. This volume is more catholic than all that in style but is very much a mirror of current concerns. Editor Henderson himself sets the tone by decrying the thought that AI aims to replace flesh-and-blood writers, direly announcing, "For the record Pushcart will reject all chatbot plagiarisms and will ban forever any human attempting to foist machine products on our editors." The 63 selections that follow are human, all too human. Sophie Klahr’s poem "Tender" mourns the merciful euthanasia of a young black bear burned in a wildfire, closing with her instructions to her writing students: "I’ll say a sonnet is a little song / to hold a thing that otherwise cannot / be held: a lonely thing; a death; a bear." In "What if Putin Laughed," Steve Stern examines the figure of the shlemiel as "the quintessential Jewish archetype," closing his essay with a well-worn but still up-to-the-minute joke told on Vladimir Putin by Volodymyr Zelensky. Matthew Neill Null delivers "The Dropper," a powerful short story that portrays a dog rescuer forever troubled by the horrors that people can inflict on animals. "You talk to your neighbors, you figure out right quick who’d’ve been Nazis," he murmurs. And in "The Blob," an essay that’s both beautifully expressed and downright depressing, Molly Gallentine looks at climate change in part through the lens of the 1958 creature-feature film The Blob, closing on just the right note as the title critter is locked in ice: Says a policeman, "I don’t think it can be killed, but at least we’ve got it stopped.: Answers Steve McQueen, "Yeah, as long as the arctic stays cold."
The state of the art, and required reading for all students of contemporary writing.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9798985469721
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Pushcart
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.
The sequel to It Ends With Us (2016) shows the aftermath of domestic violence through the eyes of a single mother.
Lily Bloom is still running a flower shop; her abusive ex-husband, Ryle Kincaid, is still a surgeon. But now they’re co-parenting a daughter, Emerson, who's almost a year old. Lily won’t send Emerson to her father’s house overnight until she’s old enough to talk—“So she can tell me if something happens”—but she doesn’t want to fight for full custody lest it become an expensive legal drama or, worse, a physical fight. When Lily runs into Atlas Corrigan, a childhood friend who also came from an abusive family, she hopes their friendship can blossom into love. (For new readers, their history unfolds in heartfelt diary entries that Lily addresses to Finding Nemo star Ellen DeGeneres as she considers how Atlas was a calming presence during her turbulent childhood.) Atlas, who is single and running a restaurant, feels the same way. But even though she’s divorced, Lily isn’t exactly free. Behind Ryle’s veneer of civility are his jealousy and resentment. Lily has to plan her dates carefully to avoid a confrontation. Meanwhile, Atlas’ mother returns with shocking news. In between, Lily and Atlas steal away for romantic moments that are even sweeter for their authenticity as Lily struggles with child care, breastfeeding, and running a business while trying to find time for herself.
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-668-00122-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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