Granta 118: Exit Strategies

Granta: The Magazine of New Writing #118

by John Freeman (Editor), Alice Munro (Contributor)

Be it a wrong turn, a bad relationship, a debilitating illness or a war, every action creates a reaction, every move is followed by another move. How do we get out of what we’ve gotten ourselves into? How do we deal with what’s been thrust upon us? Granta 118 zooms in close on the phenomenon of the exit strategy.

With award-winning reportage, memoir and fiction, Granta has illuminated the most complex issues of modern life through the refractory light of literature. This issue features new stories by Alice Munro, Susan Minot, Ann Beattie, David Long, and Daniel Alarcon; an excerpt from an upcoming novel by Anne Tyler; new memoir writing by John Barth and Aleksandar Hemon; and many other pieces that examine how we get ourselves out and the repercussions that follow. Hindsight is twenty/twenty, but it’s what we do moving forward that defines us and � in the best of all worlds � redeems us.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Literature, Essays, 21st Century

264 pages, Paperback

First published February 2, 2012

About the author

Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

John Freeman is an award-winning writer and book critic who has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, and The Wall Street Journal. Freeman won the 2007 James Patterson Pageturner Award for his work as the president of the National Book Critics Circle, and was the editor of Granta from 2009 to 2013. He lives in New York City, where he teaches at NYU and edits a new literary biannual called Freeman's.

Reviews

[Liviu · Rating 5 out of 5]

excellent issue with moving and outstanding pieces by C. Messud (this starts with the startling "I went to Beirut in June of 2010 because my father was dying" and unpacks the sentence and a lot of history thorugh the prism of her parents and grandparents lives), J. Chicurel (about the dilemma: is is a good idea to close an orphan children care place because a volunteer abused one of the girls there - well, it happened but the result was that the kids were placed in foster care with tragic results a few years later), V Manko (a piece of the comic absurd in the form of an interrogation in the US of the 1920's), C. Okparanta (about a Nigerian woman quest to rejoin her loved one in America - though it just happened said loved one is another woman), A Beattie (a man struggles to deal with the accidental death of his wife), A Munro (this I won't give away the twist but it is great writing and a brutal story) and A Hemon ("War dogs: in Sarajevo - enough said) with the rest of pieces readable to good also

great thematic and great execution for one of the best issues of the literary magazine

[Andrew Kaufman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Someday I will grow up and get wise and insightful and learn how to use a semi-colon and become 100 times better at writing and then I'll send a story to Granta and they'll send me back a form-rejection-letter and at the bottom of it someone will have scribbled 'Close. Keep trying!' and i will die happy.

[Karen·]

Arrived yesterday. Of course I had to crack straight into the sublime Alice Munro.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like another reviewer, I turned first to the Alice Munro short story, "In Sight of the Lake", and of course it was wonderful. She has returned to Munro country, in southwestern Ontario. She said several years ago that she was retiring from writing but there have since been a few short stories published here and there, including at least a couple in the New Yorker. I'm glad she has changed her mind.
"Thirty Girls" by Susan Minot was a powerful short about a nun who is a headmistress of a girls' school in Uganda, and she sets out to reclaim her students who were abducted/confiscated/stolen by rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army.
Anne Tyler's "The Beginner's Goodbye", about a newly-minted widower, was gently funny and poignant without being sentimental. And one could say the same about John Barth's "The End?"

[Susan Emmet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really liked the variety in this edition of Granta - poetry, photographs, fiction and non-fiction - the usual mix, but powerful.
Adrienne Rich, John Barth, Alice Munro, Anne Tyler, Claire Messud, Susan Minot, Daniel Alarcon and others sport their wares. Especially liked Messud's remembering of her father and John Barth's short piece on maybe running out of "stuff" to write about. Or not!
All included deal with various sorts of coping, of "exits," from all sorts of situations. Some exits work; some don't. Lots to ponder about the efficacy of all the strategies.
Again - the power of the word prevails.

[T P Kennedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A super collection. This is one of the best Grantas I've read in quite some time. It's worth buying just for the moving and tender sketch by Claire Messud of the death of her father and his ties to Beirut and the disturbing and moving story by Judy Chircurel. Add to the mix an odd and effective Anne Tyler story and a John Barth brief essay and it all amounts to an extraordinarily good reads. A particularly good literary chocolate box!

[Anubhav · Rating 4 out of 5]

So many great stories. Thirty Girls, Provincisls and Bonfire will stay. The title, as with all of Grantas publications, is with such hidden meaning....

[Lawrence · Rating 3 out of 5]

Among the best in this issue is the story by Jacob Newberry about the limited choices for living an authentic life perceived by the group of gay friends in small town deep south and their resignation, quite understandable, about that fate. It's a reminder to straights who decry the "special rights" they perceive the LGBT community "demanding" and to gays who might be a little too comfortable that the struggle is over that for far too many being openly gay in this society even in 2012 extracts a cruelly significant price. Nice contrast with the story by Chinelo Okparanta about the Nigerian woman who sees, although not without some reservation, moving to America as a way to facilitate being more open about her relationship, love for another women which in her own country is both illegal and dangerous. I also liked the story by Aleksandar Hemon about his family's pet - an Irish setter - and the effect of the war in Bosnia on his family, friends displacement along with their pet as well as Judy Chicurel's recounting of what happens when a volunteer casually learns of the fate of an orphan she gradually abandoned the search for when he is displaced from his group home and swallowed by the system. While these stories might seen to have little in common, these stories exemplify the theme of this issue, "Exit Strategies" Some times the exit is chosen deliberately; others times, passively accepted. This was overall a fairly good issue of Granta, despite its inclusion of a rather cliched story by Susan Minot about a nun facing a choice about which of her students to abandon to their fate at the hands of their guerrilla kidnappers.

[Ann Douglas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this issue from cover to cover, while I was travelling last week.

The standouts in the volume, for me, were

"Thirty Girls" by Susan Minot, a haunting story based on an actual incident in which Catholic school girls were kidnapped in Uganda;

"Summer" by Jacob Newberry, about coming out in post-Katrina Mississippi;

"America" by Chinelo Okparenta, about difficult choices faced by a woman in love in a highly repressive society;

"The Island" -- a photo essay by Stacy Kranitz;

"The Beginner's Goodbye" by Anne Tyler, about a widower;

"Bonfire" by David Long, about youthful lust viewed through the lens of time;

"In Sight of the Lake" by Alice Munro, about what we're prepared to admit to ourselves (and what our loved ones are prepared to admit to themselves) about how aging changes us;

"The End?" by John Barth, in which he muses about whether his writing career is coming to an end.

Of all these pieces, I think that John Barth's will stick with me the longest. Imagining an end to life is one thing; imagining an end to the time in your life when you are a writer is something else entirely. (I hope that when that time comes for me, the two endings happen at the same time.)

[Catherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good edition of Granta, with some powerful stories and, for once, I didn't find the non-fiction dry or overly pretentious. Claire Messaud's musings on the death of her father and the Beirut he knew might have been a little self-indulgent, but had things to say about losses before the final one that were worth pondering. Another piece of personal reportage, of escaping the Balkan conflict, was less clichéd because it focussed on the family pets. In this issue it was something I usually look forward to - the poetry - that said nothing to me. I'm afraid the offerings this time mamaged to be both rambling and impenetrable at the same time. Sorry.

[sisterimapoet · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first Granta magazine I've read close to it's release date - therefore the only one where I haven't already encountered some of the pieces elsewhere.

As was to be hoped it offered a nice range of styles and approaches to the theme, and while some entertained or illuminated, others encouraged me to seek out the whole from which the extract was taken (the Tyler for one). The Barth and the Messud were non-fiction highlights for me.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed the stories in this issue, especially the one by Claire Messud. Also, I'd never heard of John Barth, and after reading his brief story I'll definitely be checking out his older works in the future.

[Michele · Rating 4 out of 5]

City Boy by Judy Chicurel and Summer by Jacob Newberry are the ones that really stick in my mind, along with The Provincials by Daniel Alarcon. Great issue.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was going to review 118 in one word: "meh!" The last piece, Alexsander Hemon's "War Dogs", was a moving chronicle of the humanity of animals and the brutality of man.

[Anja Sebunya · Rating 3 out of 5]

powerful writing.... especially the story about the abduction of half the boarding school of girls in northern Uganda. i know the Sisters involved... authentic !!!

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another good set of reads. I like it that most of the authors were those that I was unfamiliar with

[Lera · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mostly pretty grim as you'd expect from the title. The one that stuck in my head was 'City Boy' by Judy Chicurel, about a lost boy.

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

Granta

[Nyambura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great collection of stories. Brilliant new & old voices. Gem

[Roxani · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gift from a friend at just the right time. The Claire Messud essay took my breath away, but it is really hard to play favorites with the wonder of essays in this one.