عطر دارچین

by Laura Furman (Series Editor), بیتا نفیسی (Translator)

An arresting collection of contemporary fiction at its best, these stories explore a vast range of subjects, from love and deception to war and the insidious power of class distinctions. However clearly spoken, in voices sophisticated, cunning, or na•ve, here is fiction that consistently defies our expectations. Selected from thousands of stories in hundreds of literary magazines, the twenty prize-winning stories are accompanied by essays from each of the three eminent jurors on which stories they judged the best, and observations from all twenty prizewinners on what inspired them.

“The Room”
William Trevor

“The Scent of Cinnamon”
Charles Lambert

“Cherubs”
Justine Dymond

“Galveston Bay, 1826”
Eddie Chuculate

“The Gift of Years”
Vu Tran

“The Diarist”
Richard McCann

“War Buddies”
Joan Silber

“Djamilla”
Tony D’Souza

“In a Bear’s Eye”
Yannick Murphy

“Summer, with Twins”
Rebecca Curtis

“Mudder Tongue”
Brian Evenson

“Companion”
Sana Krasikov

“A Stone House”
Bay Anapol

“The Company of Men”
Jan Ellison

“City Visit”
Adam Haslett

“The Duchess of Albany”
Christine Schutt

“A New Kind of Gravity”
Andrew Foster Altschul

“Gringos”
Ariel Dorfman

“El Ojo de Agua”
Susan Straight

“The View from Castle Rock”
Alice Munro

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Anthologies

440 pages, Paperback

First published May 8, 2007

About the author

Laura J. Furman (born 1945) is an American author best known for her role as series editor for the O. Henry Awards prize story collection. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Mirabella, Ploughshares, Southwest Review.

She has written three collections of stories (The Glass House, Watch Time Fly, and Drinking with the Cook), two novels (The Shadow Line and Tuxedo Park), and a memoir (Ordinary Paradise).

She founded American Short Fiction, which was a three-time finalist for the National Magazine Award. She is currently Professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in writing. Most recently, she has announced that she has submitted a collection of short stories to her agent, and the subsequent collection will be her first new work to follow the release of 2001's Drinking with the Cook.

Reviews

[Esraa Gibreen · Rating 3 out of 5]

أوووه وأخيرا وبعد حوالي 15 يوم من القراءة... إنتهت المجموعة القصصية المكونة من 20 قصة مختلفة لـ 20 كاتبة وكاتب مختلفين، مشتركة في الحصول على جائزة أو هنري، متفاوتة في الطول الذي كان حده الأدنى حوالي 10 صفحات وحده الأقصي حوالي 35 صفحة، ومتفاوتة أيضا في الجودة، لم ترتقِ واحدة منهم لتكن مذهلة جدا، ولم تنحدر واحدة منهم لتكن سيئة جدا.

[Práxedes Rivera · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although not every short story in this set deserves five stars, the overall thrust of this collection is splendid --kudos to editor Laura Furman.

O. Henry stories are characterized by their unexpected endings, and most of the titles in this compendium utilize said technique. Yet the range of styles and topics is such that this literary resource never gets boring.

Great for variety when traveling or for those with short attention spans ;-)

[Claudia · Rating 4 out of 5]

So far this is such a good collection. "Summer: with Twins" is beautiful and The Scent of Cinnamon is atmospheric, a perfect ghost story, and beautiful example of how wonderful genre writing can be.

[KayC · Rating 4 out of 5]

I particularly liked "Gringos" by Ariel Dorfman, "The Gift of Years" by Vu Tran, and "The Scent of Cinnamon" by Charles Lambert. What do these 3 stories have in common? I ask myself. Strong settings (wish I could travel more) and a sense of surprise--what I thought was happening (and at times what the characters thought was happening) wasn't necessarily what was really happening. How did Dorfman, Tran, and Lambert do that?

[Jenn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best stories:

The company of men- Jan Ellison

[Samane · Rating 2 out of 5]

وانلام بيش از هركس ديگري كه خود را مي شناخت از فراموش كردن امور مهم وحشت داشت. آن وقت ها كه جوان تر بود پدرش مي گفت هرچيزي كه به آساني از ياد مي رود، بيشتر سزاوار به خاطر سپردن است.

[Catherine Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

As usual with these collections, there is a mix of treasure and trash. For me the standouts were Charles Lambert's "The Scent of Cinammon," Yannick Murphy's "In A Bear's Eye," and Christine Schutt's "The Duchess of Albany." Alice Munro's "The View from Castle Rock," is good too I suppose but I'd already seen it in so many other places that it didn't really have any impact this time. I'm beginning to agree with my friend Cyndi that the O'Henry collections, even though they're not 100%great, are all least more consistent than the Best American, which in recent years have been very spotty indeed. There are stories in the 2007 BASS that would get absolutely creamed in a Warren Wilson workshop, for example. I don't expect to love every story in these collections but I do think that I ought to at least be able to understand why any given story made the cut. With the latest BASS a few of the stories are so awful that it makes me question the integrity of the whole process -- did this year's editor owe Author X a favor? There's no other explanation for the inclusion of Louis Auchinschloss's story, for example... But I digress. The 2007 O'Henry collection is worth the read.

[tomlinton · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's relevancy and writing
that lead me to a lesser score
for this anthology than
the year after

Some slices of the human life
just don't wring my bells
or appeal to my peelings

I suspect this is due
to my taurishness
which is at star wars
with my mooning aquarians
and rising with the librans

...or some such truck

Thus...
when I likes it
I likes it
my precious
and there ain't no explaining

It's just universal stuff
Maybe star dust
Maybe fairy dust
Maybe corpse powder

[Lisa Nikolidakis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Same as with Best American, insightful as to what garners attention in today's short fiction world. "The View From Castle Rock," by Alice Munroe, is as good as she consistently is. Nice work with varying points of view. "Mudder Tongue," by Brian Evenson, has stuck with me long after I read it, though I keep questioning why. "Djamilla," "Summer, with Twins," and "City Visit" were also standouts. I wasn't a huge fan of William Trevor's "The Room," which was the opening short in this book.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

the o'henry prize collections are always so great because you get to read the work of young writers who have never published before, but happen to have written something brilliant, right next to the work of the likes of alice munro. of course, the material is uneven (the william trevor that the editors liked so much to me was brutally boring) but the highs make up for the lows.

[Elise · Rating 4 out of 5]

So far I have read "Galveston Bay, 1826" by Eddie Chuculate;"The View from Castle Rock" by Alice Munro; and "A Stone House" by Bay Anapol. I have been dazzled by them all, especially Galveston Bay and Stone House. If stories could be wallpapered to a room for a week or two, or however long you felt like, I would choose those two.

[Breeze · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great collection of short stories. I've had this book for a long time and am trying to clear my shelves. I wish I had paged through the whole book before starting to read individual stories because at the end there were explanations by each author, describing their inspirations for the stories they wrote.

[Edan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read half of this latest from the O'Henry awards on the plane. There are some stunning stories here (even one from Sana--I know her!), and I delighted in the diversity of styles. I tend to enjoy this anthology series better than the Best American.

[Avni · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're interested in seeing the gamut of what a short story can do, read this. It helped me learn how to write short stories, all of which are unpublishable, while feeling like I understand what I'm trying to say.

[Omid Milanifard · Rating 3 out of 5]

من عطر دارچین رو به عنوان یه مجموعه داستان کوتاه برگزیده خوندم و مثل بیشتر مجموعه‌ها تجربه‌ی بالا و پایین داشت. بعضی قصه‌ها خیلی خوب بودن و بعضیا هم اونقدر بی‌رمق که مونده بودم چرا اصلاً انتخاب شدن. فضای کلی کتاب به سنت ا.هنری وفاداره: پایان‌های غافلگیرکننده‌.
برای من برجسته‌ترین داستان، «تابستان با دوقلوها» از ربکا کرتیس بود؛ پر از طنز تلخ و جسارت.
پی‌نوشت: جایزه‌ی ا.هنری یکی از معتبرترین جوایز داستان کوتاه در ادبیاته که هر سال بهترین داستان‌های منتشرشده در مجلات و نشریات رو انتخاب و توی یک کتاب جمع می‌کنه. اسمش هم به یاد نویسنده‌ی مشهور آمریکایی، ا.هنری، گذاشته شده. نویسنده‌ای که به خاطر پایان‌های غیرمنتظره و هوشمندانه‌ی داستان‌هاش معروفه.

[Mahmoud · Rating 1 out of 5]

أسوء كتاب في العالم

[Abdallah Moh · Rating 1 out of 5]

مجموعة قصصية لكتاب أمريكان ، لم يعجبني فيها الا قصة واحدة

[Dalia hassan · Rating 3 out of 5]

اللي عجبني الاكثر :
هدية السنين __كاتب اليوميات__لسان قاتل__المشهد من على صخرة القلعه
أقلهم وأسخفهم جميلة والغرفة

[لمياء كمال]

مهما بلغت سخافة الكتب التى اقرأ ، لا أترك كتاب بدأته إلا أنهيت ثم أطلقت حكمي نحوه!
لكن هذا لم أستطع أبدًا أن أتقدم فيه حتى إلا نصه ، بدأت اختار منه قصص متفرقة ولكن لم يُجدي شئ، سخيف !

[William · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, its O.Henry Prize Stories, which means this is a collection of short stories in one book. I found some very impressive plot in the book that I feel sense of perfection after reading it; and of course some quite opposites that I literally need to skip the whole story. Below I'll list some ones I really like:

Galveston Bay, 1826 by Eddie Chuculate, Manoa
War Buddies by Joan Silber, Land-Grant College Review
Mudder Tongue by Brian Eveson, McSweeney's Quarterly
El Ojo de Agua by Susan Straight, Zoetrope

I read the paper-book and thought the front size is pretty small. I think this effect my score as well.

[John Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading the stories in this collection can be inspiring and depressing simultaneously. There are so many good ones. There are so many bad ones. It seems inevitable that the good ones are different for everybody. The bad ones are never agreed upon and some of the stories are never even mentioned by anyone ever again. Those are probably the most bloodless, toothless tales that shouldn't have gotten in anyway.

How can twenty people write such good work every year and still fall into obscurity? Has this always happened? It must be that not every story in this book is a classic. I certainly yawned at some of them. There was one about a sexy lady ghost that travels around on spice boat in Ireland, leaving Irish bachelors with blue balls. But think: probably only ten percent of these stories will ever see publication past their authors' collections. Say one story of the twenty will be anthologized for ever and ever. And that's a generous estimate. There's so much talent out there and all these loony fucks are writing away for some reason that would not stand up if they ever stopped to question what exactly they were doing with themselves. Maybe the name of one fortunate O. Henry Prize winner will ever be spoken again by the year 2100. The rest may as well have been substitute teachers their whole lives, at least as far as history is concerned. I mean really, why write a story that anyone with a pulse would yawn at? There's really no reason at all to hold back.

Of all the stories in this collection, my favorite was Summer, With Twins by Rebecca Curtis. Wow. It's hard to put into words the savagery and humor combined in that piece. There was Carver in it and there was Cheever and O'Connor. Mix all the good writers up and make them write today and you'd get something like Rebecca Curtis. Here's the review of Rebecca Curtis' story collection: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/15/boo...

[Stacy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up this collection so I could get better familiar with the types of stories that were not only being accepted by literary journals across the country, but being honored in some way as well. Instead of reading dozens upon dozens of literary journals to understand every niche market, this was my way of researching the cream of the crop selected for these journals. I can’t say all these stories were all that deserving, but I can count my self educated. I bought (and started reading) this collection last year, but some of my favorite stories were the ones I read over the last two weeks such as Susan Straight’s “El Ojo de Agua” from Zoetrope and Jan Ellison’s “The Company of Men” from New England Review. Several others were to unremarkable to mention.

[Tiny Pants · Rating 3 out of 5]

I know it's not a fair comparison, since O. Henry pulls its stories a bit differently than Best American does, but man, did this blow BASS 2007 out of the water. For one, I was able to read it in about 1/25th the time. For two, the stories were actually really good (see my review of the Best American Short Stories 2007 for what those were like -- hooboy). This collection was diverse enough to never be boring, and had very few pieces that stood out as clunkers. It also had way fewer of the "usual suspects" in contemporary literary fiction -- most of these were authors with whom I was unfamiliar. I particularly liked the pieces by Charles Lambert, Vu Tran, Richard McCann, and Adam Haslett.

[Alison · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this anthology well enough, but what has stuck with me is a single piece of (repeated) imagery from one of the stories. None of them have really stuck with me beyond that, and I found that I wasn't particularly absorbed in what I was reading much of the time.

I guess that's all to say that the 2007 collection wasn't particularly worth the 1 year wait to get it from my library. (Though I think the wait had more to do with it being ordered & processed & read by the cataloging dept than it did with a long list of holds ahead of me.)

[Christy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of people whose opinions I respect really like these annual short story anthologies. After I finish this one and the Best American 2007 (maybe Stephen King can really pick 'em?), I solemnly swear to quit buying them because they never fail to disappoint.

After my carping above, the collection picked up, but I am still not convinced that I should continue to invest my money and time in these "best of" collections. I ended up skipping 3 stories and really enjoyed about 3 or 4, particularly the Yannick Murphy story.

[Kurt · Rating 3 out of 5]

These collections are always difficult, given the selection of editors, and the world weary vision that must eventually infuse the reading process for professional readers. There are great stories in this book - William Trevor always a joy - and then a fair amount of mediocre stories that fly under the radar of 'experimental.' Sometimes, as in "The Bear" the experiments pay off, but frequently they are more frustrating than anything else. That said, it was a great teaching book because it demonstrates all that can be done with the short story.

[Brandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

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?

[Grant · Rating 3 out of 5]

since 1997 i have read many of the O. Henry Prize collections. usually they are filled with surprising and extraordinary stories. this year was not the case. i can't imagine there was such a lack of quality stories, so my guess is the jurors chose poorly. with the exception of a few stories like "galveston bay, 1826", "view from castle rock" (both historical works), and "a stone house", the collection was a yawn.

[Kirsten · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wasn't very impressed with the collection this year. Maybe it was just crankiness on my part, but for the most part I felt underwhelmed. However, for me the standouts were "The Gift of Years" by Vu Tran, "Mudder Tongue" by Brian Evenson, "El Ojo de Agua" by Susan Straight, and naturally, "The View from Castle Rock" by Alice Munro (which I had already read).

If I was on the prize jury and got to write a little introductory blurb for one story, I'd probably choose "Mudder Tongue."

[Dana · Rating 3 out of 5]

You get a lot of bang for your buck with a good short story collection, which is why I try to pick up either the O. Henry Awards or the Pushcart Press volume every year. Not every story is great, but for the ones I don't like so much I turn it into an exercise of "What are the elements that make this a worthy short story." And usually, I can figure it out.