آخرین روز عجیب در لس آنجلس: مجموعه داستان برگزیدگان جایزه اُ. هنری ۲۰۰۲

by Larry Dark (Editor), لیدا طرزی (Translator)

مجموعه داستان «آخرین روز عجیب در لس‌آنجلس» مجموعه‌ای است از داستان‌های کوتاه برگزیده در جایزه ادبی اُ. هنری که به زبان انگلیسی در آمریکا نوشته و منتشر شده‌اند. این داستان‌های کوتاه از آثاری انتخاب شده است که در یکی از نشریات آمریکا منتشر شده و پس از آن توسط هیئت داوران جایزه، برگزیده و در نهایت در جمع آثار منتخب قرار گرفته است. این داستان‌ها با وجود انتشار در قالب کتاب طی سال ۲۰۰۲، همگی در سالی نوشته شده است که حادثه بزرگ تروریستی یازدهم سپتامبر در ایالات متحده آمریکا رخ داده است. گرچه در این داستان‌ها نمی‌توان رد و نشانی از این حادثه یافت اما به گفته نویسنده مقدمه این کتاب که سرداور جایزه در سال ۲۰۰۲ به شمار می‌رفته است؛ جان مایه‌های شخصی، عاطفی، روان‌شناختی، جریان ذهن، حرکت، و کوچک‌ترین گزینش‌های نویسندگان همچنان در داستان‌ها باقی است و این ترکیب، قدرت از آنجا دارد که انسان‌ها، صرف‌نظر از جمله آنچه اتفاق می‌افتد، جهان را در آن سطح صمیمی که داستان‌ها مضمون خود را عَرضه می‌کنند تجربه می‌کنند و این رویکردی است که نویسندگان داستان کوتاه نسبت به واقعه ۱۱ سپتامبر اتخاذ خواهند کرد.

در میان آثار حاضر در این کتاب از نویسندگانی چون آن بیتی و آلیس مونرو نیز آثاری به چشم می‌خورد. بیتی از نویسندگان آمریکایی است که تاکنون برنده جایزه آکادمی آمریکایی ادب و هنر و جایزه پن مالامود شده است و نوشته‌های او عموماً با آثار جی. دی. سالینجر، جان چیور و جان آیداپک مقایسه می‌شود. از سوی دیگر آلیس مونرو نیز در میان خوانندگان داستان در آمریکای شمالی به عنوان ملکه داستان کوتاه مشهور است و چند سال پیش از این نیز توانست جایزه نوبل ادبیات را به دست بیاورد.

این مجموعه با وجود روال سنتی انتشار این مجموعه داستان در آمریکا، مبنی بر حفظ چهارچوب‌های سنتی داستان کوتاه، از این قالب سنتی روایی عبور کرده است و سعی کرده در شکل‌های روایی فراسنتی و غیر واقع‌گرایانه با مخاطب خود روبرو شود.

از سوی دیگر داستان‌های این مجموعه را می‌تواند برخورد و مواجه و ترکیبی از سنت داستان‌نویسی جوان و کهن آمریکایی به شمار آورد که در کنار هم قرار گرفتن آنها منجر به ایجاد یک کلکسیون از اندیشه و نیز شیوه بیان داستانی در آمریکا پیش روی مخاطب می‌شود. این مساله زمانی خود را برای مخاطب قابل توجه‌تر می‌کند که به وجود برخی مضامین مشترک در میان این آثار داستانی برمی‌خوریم که نشان از اشتراک بسیاری از دغدغه‌ها در میان مخاطبان داستان دارد. مضامینی مانند سفر، مرگ، ازدواج و نوشتن، از جمله مهم‌ترین موضوعاتی است که در میان نویسندگان این مجموعه به صورت مشترک مورد توجه قرار گرفته است.

انتشارات کتاب نیستان این مجموعه را در ادامه ترجمه و انتشار تمامی مجموعه داستان‌های برگزیده جایزه اُ. هنری در دست انتشار قرار داده است. این مجموعه با دبیری علیرضا فامیان در دست ترجمه و انتشار قرار گرفته و این کتاب را نیز لیدا طرزی ترجمه کرده است.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Anthologies

220 pages, Paperback

First published August 27, 2002

Reviews

[Chad · Rating 5 out of 5]

The twenty stories collected in The O. Henry Prize Stories 2002—edited by Larry Dark with stories selected by literary heavyweights Dave Eggers, Joyce Carol Oates, and Colson Whitehead—share many commonalities. Most of the stories are long, intricate narratives, ones that unfold slowly, transport us backward and forward in time, and contain similar detailed character-and-plot developments we’d find in novels. This isn’t surprising considering that many of the stories in the 2002 collection are written by authors we associate with expansive canvases: Anthony Doerr, Louise Erdrich, David Foster Wallace, and Alice Munro, the queen of novelesque stories. It’s not uncommon for Munro to spend paragraphs describing the look on a character’s face—an expression that might represent vulnerability, superciliousness, cruelty—certainly not a look meant to be observed by others, but, of course, is. Munro’s looks, glances, and gestures connect to deeper family histories, illuminate the reasons for failed marriages, expose shameful secrets. Many of Munro’s stories—including this collection’s “Family Furnishings,”—and other stories in this anthology, expand the way short story writers construct pacing and time in their narratives. Many of these stories dwell (at times unapologetically wallow) in the minutiae of everyday life but then omit years and major life events (marriages, divorces, births, deaths).

The five pieces I’m going to discuss—“The Lives of Strangers” by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, “The Hunter’s Wife,” by Anthony Doerr, “The Butcher’s Wife” by Louise Erdrich, “Do Not Disturb” by A.M. Homes, and “Family Furnishings” by Alice Munro—share a craft element I find extremely intelligent and emotionally engaging. All five stories explore the relationships between two characters—the story’s narrator and another character—and through the narrator’s point of view we experience the second character’s complex, often heartbreaking world. In essence, we come to understand and feel a direct connection with a character filtered through a secondhand source, the story’s narrator.

Through the process of focusing so exclusively on one character (a displaced stranger, a gifted medium, a dying friend, a bitter wife, and an eccentric aunt) the narrators in these five stories confront the most vulnerable, uncharitable parts of themselves. Divakaruni, Doerr, Erdrich, Homes, and Munro are interested in how these revelations establish intimate bonds between their narrators and characters.

At the beginning of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s masterful “The Lives of Strangers,” Leela, an American embarking on a pilgrimage to Shiva’s shrine in Amarnath, “wonders if this is the true lure of travel, this hope of a transformed self.” On the pilgrimage, Leela meets Mrs. Das, a widow who has been disinherited and disowned by her family and lives in a women’s hostel. All of this is a source of embarrassment and pity for the other women on the pilgrimage. Leela’s Aunt Seema warns her to avoid Mrs. Das. “Some people…are born under an unlucky star. They bring bad luck to themselves and everyone close to them.”

Divakaruni develops Mrs. Das’s character through Leela’s close third-person point of view. Leela feels a connection with Mrs. Das, for Leela herself is unlucky and prone to bizarre accidents (falling off her bicycle in front of a moving car, defective electrical wires catching fire in her bedroom during the night). Leela begins caring for Mrs. Das, playing the role of savior, and she mostly does this in secret so her Aunt Seema and the other women won’t blame her for courting bad luck on the pilgrimage. At one point, Leela even washes Mrs. Das’s feet, which are on the verge of developing gangrene. While doing this, Leela observes, “This is the first time…that she (Leela) has known such intimacy. How amazing that it should be a stranger who has opened her like a dictionary and brought to light this word whose definition has escaped her until now.”

As the story unfolds, we come to realize that Leela’s acts of kindness toward Mrs. Das are largely self-centered. Before the pilgrimage, she swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills following a contentious romantic break-up. Now she needs a confidant. She shares the details of her suicide attempt with Mrs. Das and afterward feels mortified about revealing such intimate information to a stranger. Leela quickly comes to resent Mrs. Das, convinces herself that “she is no savior,” and lashes out at Mrs. Das. Leela establishes an intimate relationship with Mrs. Das only to release her burdens on the older woman and abandon her.

Anthony Doerr explores a quarantined intimacy in “The Hunter’s Wife.” Mary Roberts, the namesake of the story’s title, is the protagonist, but we see her primarily through the hunter’s point of view. The hunter is twice as old as Mary, and he met Mary in Great Falls, Montana, when she was a fifteen-year-old magician’s assistant and getting sawed in half. The hunter tells us “She (Mary) was beautiful to him in a way that nothing else had ever been beautiful.”

Early in their relationship, Mary tells the hunter, “I have magic inside me.” When she touches dead humans, animals, or insects—almost anything in the natural world—Mary can see where the beings went after they died. She can also feel them. Through the hunter’s point of view, we see Mary transform into a woman who realizes her powers. “With each day she learned more about what she could do. She felt a foreign and keen sensitivity bubbling in her blood, as if a seed planted long ago were just now sprouting. The larger the animal, the more powerfully it could shake her. The recently dead were virtual mines of visions, casting them off with a slow-fading strength as if cutting a long series of tethers one by one.”

Mary’s powers ascend in direct proportion to the hunter’s fears of Mary’s powers, his feelings of insecurity about losing her. “Everything, it seemed, was out of his hands…his wife, the course of his own life.” The hunter creates a leashed intimacy for Mary. Doerr’s writing is so visceral we feel trapped inside the hunter’s one-room cabin with Mary, isolated for months during brumal Montana winters. As others start to recognize Mary’s talents, they pay her for information about recently departed, or missing, loved ones. Mary saves this money in a boot, and the hunter becomes extremely upset when he finds it. He accuses Mary of being a fake, a parasite who profits on others’ miseries. (She is neither.) By accusing Mary, the hunter is also confronting the limits of his constructed intimacy. Mary leaves him, and he doesn’t see her again for twenty years—during which Doerr’s story, in Munrolike style, leaps forward two decades. Mary is now an internationally renowned medium who lives in Manhattan, a bestselling author and television personality who travels the world and helps those who have lost loved ones. The hunter has never left rural Montana, but he has, slowly and over the course of many years, come to believe in Mary’s gifts. Doerr concludes “The Hunter’s Wife” with the possibility that the hunter and Mary might discover a new, healthier intimacy. They stare at the surface of a winter pond, “their reflected images trembled like two people trapped against the glass of a parallel world.”

Louise Erdrich’s “The Butcher’s Wife” is told from the point of view of Delphine, a woman who leaves the Twin Cities to return to her small-town Minnesota family farm and care for her alcoholic father. Delphine meets Eva, the namesake of the story’s title, and the two women form an instant connection when Eva writes down her mincemeat pie recipe and gives it to Delphine. “It’s all in the goddam suet,” Eva tells Delphine. Erdrich’s story covers a relatively short period, perhaps less than a year, but during this time Delphine and Eva form a close friendship. Delphine, who spends her days cleaning up “shameful things in her father’s house” and “is regarded as beneath notice by the town’s best society” is so impressed with Eva that’s she’s relieved to discover Eva, a German immigrant, isn’t a good speller. There are typos in the mincemeat pie recipe. “Delphine was grateful for this one tiny flaw, for Eva appeared so fantastically skilled a being, so assured—she was also the mother of two sturdy and intelligent sons—that she would have been an unapproachable paragon to Delphine otherwise.”

Eva is diagnosed with late-stage cancer, and Delphine helplessly witnesses the disease eviscerate Eva’s body, “as though her pain were an animal she had wrestled to earth.” Eva and Delphine’s friendship helps Delphine contemplate her own mortality. Erdrich writes, “Delphine had always had a tendency to think about fate, but she did so more often now that Eva’s sickness put her constantly in mind of mortality, and also made her marvel at how anyone managed to live at all. Life was a precious feat of daring, she saw, improbable, as strange as a feast of slugs.” Through Delphine’s point of view, we’re privy to extremely graphic descriptions of Eva’s suffering, but Eva’s disease never diminishes Delphine’s admiration for Eva’s ironclad will, the dignified manner Eva faces death. Erdrich tells us that Eva “refused to die in a morbid way. She sometimes laughed freakishly at pain and made fun of her condition, more so now when the end was close.” “The Butcher’s Wife” maps the entire arc of a close female friendship—from the scene where Delphine and Eva meet at the butcher’s counter almost until the moment Eva dies. By showing us Eva through Delphine’s point of view, Erdrich gives us a clear understanding of Eva’s character apart from her cancer. Eva’s fortitude. Her myriad talents and insights.

Many of the stories in The O. Henry Prize Stories 2002 focus on marriage, and, as we’ve seen, there are numerous references to “the wife.” Unlike Mary in “The Hunter’s Wife” and Eva in “The Butcher’s Wife,” we don’t know the name of “the wife” in the A.M. Homes story “Do Not Disturb.” Nor do we learn the name of the first-person narrator. However, through the narrator’s point of view, we see a complicated portrait of his wife’s character and become voyeurs to a toxic marriage. The narrator states, “We haven’t been getting along. The situation has become oxygenless and addictive, a suffocating annihilation, each staying to see how far it will go.”

Like Eva, the narrator’s wife in “Do Not Disturb” is diagnosed with cancer—ovarian cancer, in this case—and the cancer serves as a not-so-subtle metaphor for the state of their relationship. When the story opens, the narrator wants to leave his wife but then balks after the caner diagnosis. He tells us, “I’m not going to be able to leave the woman with cancer. I’m not the kind of person who leaves the woman with cancer, but I don’t know what you do when the woman with cancer is a bitch.”

What “kind of person” is Homes’s narrator? He bears similarities to Leela in “The Lives of Strangers” in that he cultivates a savior complex, but he constantly teeters about whether he wants to salvage his marriage or abandon it. When he takes his wife to the hospital, the narrator confesses, “I have the impulse to drop her off and walk away.” Homes crafts the story’s narrator and his cancer-riddled wife with quirky nuances, biting humor, and anecdotes that feel authentic and relatable. “I am afraid that when she’s bald I won’t love her anymore,” the narrator tells us. Two pages later he counters with “There’s something aggressive about her baldness.” In the first quote, the narrator is vulnerable, a man wrestling with his wife’s disease and the shifting nature of marital intimacy. The second quote shows the narrator reeling from the reality of the situation, trying to bury his fears by placing the ownership of illness back on his wife. Homes writes sharp, fast, caustic dialogue. By not assigning names to the narrator and his wife, Homes baptizes them with both anonymity and familiarity. After we finish the story, we empathize more with the narrator than his sick wife, and uncomfortable questions present themselves. What would you do if you were in this pernicious marriage? Would you stay? Or would you go?

An unnamed first-person narrator also tells Alice Munro's “Family Furnishings,” a
sprawling story that chronicles the relationship between the narrator and her Aunt Alfrida—and how the narrator’s feelings about Alfrida change throughout the course of her life. Set in a small, unnamed Ontario town shortly after World War II, “Family Furnishings” is divided into a few distinctive movements. The first, and longest, part focuses on the narrator’s childhood. The narrator harbors intellectual ambitions; she wants to become a writer. She emulates her cosmopolitan Aunt Alfrida, her father’s cousin, who lives in Toronto and visits the narrator and her family on holidays and various other occasions. Alfrida is an advice-column writer for a local paper. When the narrator is young, Alfrida represents a welcome, worldly presence—proof that there’s a future beyond the narrator’s small town. Alfrida’s family visits bring a sense of lightheartedness, as well as scandalous stories that delight the young narrator. “She (Alfrida) mentioned queers, man-made bosoms, household triangles—all things that I had found hints of in my readings but felt giddy to hear about, even at third or fourth hand, in real life.”

The narrator’s feelings about Alfrida change when she moves away to college. She chooses a school in Toronto, the same city where Alfrida lives. Now that she’s coming into her own as a young woman and artist (reading Thomas Wolfe and Tennessee Williams instead of small-town newspaper advice columns), Aunt Alfrida’s image—what that represented to the narrator as a young girl—quickly dulls. “The jokes, the compulsive insincerity of people like Alfrida…now struck me as tawdry and boring.” Alfrida tries to get in contact with the narrator, but the narrator ignores Alfrida’s invitations. “I never would have brought any of my new friends to meet her,” the narrator tells us.

The last third of “Family Furnishings” jumps forward decades. Long gone, any intimate connection the younger narrator felt toward her Aunt Alfrida. The narrator has become a successful author (like Munro), and we learn she based one of her stories on a tragic family occurrence. She fictionalized the death of Alfrida’s mother, who died of burns after a lamp exploded in her hands. As the years progressed, this macabre incident melded into family folklore and was quietly appropriated as “a horrible treasure…something our family could claim that nobody else could.” The narrator’s father tells her Alfrida was offended the narrator had co-opted the story about her mother’s death and used it as source material. The narrator is both surprised and annoyed when she learns this. “That story I wrote, with this in it, would not be written till years later, not until it had become quite unimportant to think about who had put the idea into my head in the first place.” Here, the word “unimportant” is vital. Only by experiencing Alfrida through the narrator’s point of view can we see the full trajectory of their relationship. “Family Furnishings” explores with sophisticated complexity the people who burn bright for us at one point in our lives but whose importance later wanes.

The O. Henry Prize Stories 2002 introduced me to writers I now love—Anthony Doerr, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, and Deborah Eisenberg—and kindled a new interest in writers whose work I’d read before: Louise Erdrich and Edwidge Danticat. In addition to the pieces I wrote about, I also highly recommend these stories: “The Ceiling” by Kevin Brockmeier (the 2002 prize-winning story); “Scordatura” by Mark Ray Lewis”; “Seven” by Edwidge Danticat; “Like It or Not” by Deborah Eisenberg; and “Blood Poison” by Heidi Jon Schmidt.

I read the stories in this collection over a period that spanned more than four years. I savored them; reread them; studied their character development, structure, point of view; derived from them any lessons that might strengthen my own fiction. I read “The Hunter’s Wife” by Anthony Doerr at an outdoor wooden table in San Diego’s historic Balboa Park; “George Lassos Moon” by David Gates on a plane heading to Peoria, Illinois, and my father’s death; “Family Furnishings” by Alice Munro while enjoying a warm February brunch at the Luskin Hotel in Los Angeles. The stories in The O. Henry Prize Stories 2002 helped me weather personal losses, enhanced fun trips and gorgeous Sunday afternoons. Their narratives have blended into the fabric of my experiences, and when I revisit them, as I will throughout my life, I’ll recall exactly where I was when I first read these exquisite works.

[Chris Russell · Rating 4 out of 5]

The O. Henry Prize Stories 2002
Book review. (no spoilers)
The O. Henry award is a yearly literary award given to 20 American short stories of merit. The O. Henry award was first given out in 1918. The award is in memory of the American writer O. Henry.
O. Henry was the pen name of William Sidney Porter, a colorful American character from the turn of the 20th century who was a prolific and well-known writer of short stories.
Each year a group of editors reviews 20 stories from any American or Canadian periodical and picks some that they deem the most significant. The stories in this collection came from such notable periodicals as The New Yorker, GQ, Esquire, McSweeny’s and The Atlantic Monthly.
One has to wonder what will happen to these compilations in the new media world where a 500 word poorly written blog post about your latest diet has supplanted any literary ambitions. (Get off my lawn!)
Some time ago I came into possession of the 2002 version of the compilation. Most probably at the local library book sale. Most probably when I was buying a grocery bag full of used books for $5.
I am a sucker for a well-worn, dusty, old book. Some cast off work of literary merit that no one but librarians, starving authors and other shut ins would love. I’ll squirrel them away like so many old acorns for long plane rides, hot summer beaches and morning ruminations.
I Like the short story form. I like the economical tightness of them. I like that they can pluck one moment out of time and roll it around in their minds, inspecting the edges of it and finding the ragged bits and polished surfaces. And I don’t have to commit to the exhausting arc of a Tolstoy novel but I can still find something of merit in 20-30 pages of well digested narrative.
A compilation of short stories is an efficiency and convenience that fits into life. You can pick it up for 20 minutes of reading, put it down for a year, and pick it up again with no loss of fidelity.
The short story form forces the authors into an efficiency of narrative. What is that one thing that needs to be said? That needs to be told? That needs to be written? How do you crimp and fold that narrative to fit into the short story? What intricate acts of clarity are forced by these bits of written word origami?
These are not the novels that the authors are trying to work on. These, like love poems, will bring no money to the starving artist. They bubble to the top of the work like bits of precious meat. They interrupt the artist as an itch that must be scratched. These are ideas or pieces of ideas, more or less fully formed, that force themselves out of the shadows of the author’s mind onto the page.
The short story could be seen as a natural act. These are the stories that are practiced at the family dinner table or around the campfire. These are the moments and chapters that our lives are built up from. I’m glad that these literary editors have made the effort to save the short story from extinction.
This volume of short stories had what I have come to expect from these types of collections. Some are absolutely, brilliantly written. Some are literary experiments that the author is trying on like a funny old hat found at the Goodwill. Some are just slices of memory or family story, like walking around an old house and imagining the furniture.
The one that stood out for me in this compilation was “The Butcher’s Wife” published originally in the New Yorker by Loiuise Erdrich. Powerful writing. A slice of life piece about immigrants in Minnesota in 1936.
I wrote in the table of contents “Wow!” next to this entry as I checked off the story after I read it.
Go out my friends and save a short story collection from the rubbish heap of time. Know that these are odd children of potentially great authors. They need to be read. We owe it to ourselves to read them.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

The stories ranged from 3.6ish stars to five, so I averaged that out to a four star rating. Interestingly, I think some of the stories may suffer from the context. In other words, had I read them individually, when they appeared in their respective literary journal, I might have thought they were five star pieces, but when housed with other outstanding work, my brain pulled the inevitable compare/contrast trigger.

Que sera, sera.

In the end, this book only increased my already immense respect for short story writers. Many people can tell a breathtaking story in 250 pages, but how impressive to tell one in 25!

[Jacob · Rating 5 out of 5]

This year must have been an exceptional one for American short stories.

[Jonathan]

The two best stories, Munro's and Wallace's, keep working and pulsing off on their own, on a level far away from the touch of prizes. The other stories did what they did once and won a prize for it.

[Soy]

I've read the 1st place story ("The Ceiling") and two others. Aside from David Foster Wallace's engaging "Good Old Neon", I was extremely B-O-R-E-D. Pick up only if you're fascinated by domestic/relationship themes. Even then, maybe you should pass, as I've seen better along these lines, even though I'm not a frequent short story reader.

The characters have no character-- they're like cardboard cutouts conceived only to advance the tiny plots along.

There may be other subjects in the collection, but I'm too bored to find out.

[Rachel Bertrand · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quality, eclectic group of believably prize-winning short stories.

[Anurati · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some great finds here: The Ceiling by Kevin Brockmeier, Do Not Disturb by A.M. Homes and Good Old Neon by David Foster Wallace being my favourites. Rest of the stories read more like scenes or chapters from larger novels - lacking plot structure.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

So after my earlier enthusiastic embrace of the series, I went back and dug in, reading the edition from a couple years back and expecting the same weirdly off-the-wall magic. And what did I learn? Maybe that what I really love is the series editor Laura Furman.

This year has a different series editor, Larry Dark, and that's what I ascribe as the reason why the choices in this edition are so tame and boring. Lots of stories from the New Yorker and the NY crowd, which isn't a bad thing, per se, but isn't what I want out of this series. The result is a pretty dull collection, with few of the surprising hair-and-consciousness raising stories I've come to expect.

That doesn't mean there are none-- the David Leavitt story "Speonk" is a winner, and this has the David Foster Wallace suicide story "Good Old Neon," which makes for a really weird reading experience at this moment in time. But the collection, aside from the last four or five stories, is pretty much indistinguishable from a Best American.

[Nicole · Rating 1 out of 5]

In the interview part of the DVD "Memento", Christopher Nolan mentions that his brother, Jonathan, wrote a short story about the same plot as the movie. So, I went to the library and ordered this book, as it contains Jonathan's story. Well, Jonathan's short story is nearly incomprehensible. Worse, the stories before it are all really weird, with awful characters. I cannot imagine that these were the best of the best that year. I know the thing that puts a lot of people off about short stories is that they are just snapshots and usually do not wrap up storylines the way novels do. That doesn't bother me, if the short story is well-written. Here, the stories all just end. No wrap-up of any plot points, nor resolution of anything, just, BOOM, done. It is as if the authors were told to write X number of pages and stop. I admit that I didn't read any stories beyond Nolan's. After 5 of so crummy stories, I was done. Don't waste your time. (The movie, "Momento", on the other hand, was really interesting. The language is excessive, though.)

[kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

i haven't actually read all of the stories in this collection, but the first prize winner, the ceiling by kevin brockmeister, is one of the best short stories i've ever read. it's about the complicated lives we lead...and a giant ceiling.

[Cam · Rating 3 out of 5]

the first story in this volume is amazing, but i couldn't finish the rest. read the volume from 1996 or the collection from 1996 titled american voices: best short fiction by contemporary authors instead.(11/02)

[Christian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love these O. Henry prize winners books. They have always been my favorite. If you love short stories, or have limited time to get engrossed in a book, these are for you!

[Tamra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Favorites:
Scordatura - Mark Ray Lewis
The Butcher's Wife - Louise Erdrich
Seven - Edwidge Danticat
Egg-face - Mary Yukari Waters
The Possible Husband - Don Lee
Big Bend - Bill Roorbach

[Jamie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The grand prize story, "The Ceiling," is alone worth the price of admission.

[Nic · Rating 4 out of 5]

Do Not Disturb by A.M. Homes. Great story. And of course, it's got Alice Munro. No short story compendium can ever really be complete without her.

[Eryn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Favorites:
"The Butcher's Wife" Erdrich, "Do Not Disturb" Holmes, "That Last Odd Day in LA" Beattie, "The Hunter's Wife" Doerr, "Memento Mori" Nolan

[Matthew Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Shorts that don't suck.

[Adi Alsaid · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of misses in this collection for me. But David Foster Wallace's story was in my opinion the strongest, by far.

[Karen Hart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome reading! This collection is highly entertaining and beautifully inspiring.