SHORT STORIES
All good news
SHEILA KUMAR
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The short story baton is in safe hands.
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Granta: Best of Young American Novelists 2; Granta Publications; £12.99.
It’s all good news here; the second instalment of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists, comprising a list of names largely unknown to the casual reader, is a book to buy, read and keep. The authors are a promising
lot who have churned out some impressive work.
Let’s dabble a little in numbers, now: 11 years after Granta released its debut collection, the follow-up edition has 21 writers, all under 35 years. The debut featured among others, Pulitzer prize-winner Jeffrey Euginides who went on to garner much fame for The Virgin Suicides.
This edition has a couple of familiar names in Jonathan Safran Foer, best known for his 2005 book, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and Nell Freudenberger, who, with an India stint, has a pronouncedly sympathe
tic overview of South East Asians. Not all the stories are set in the US of A and there are author names that read like a healthy ethnic roster: Daniel Alarcon, Rattawut Lapcharoensap, Yiyun Li and Akhil Sharma.
Common factors
The takes are fresh, the twists are ingenuous, the stories unspool neatly at times, with structured messiness at others. Death seems to be a major preoccupation (one wonders if this is yet another legacy of 9/11) but pathos is mercifully avoided. Irony is another fine thread that runs through all the stories.
Yet another common factor is that all the writers seem to have attended writing school, but this has put no crimp in either their voice or perspective. And this too, must be mentioned: the language is English, not American, thanks be!
Some stories stand out. The stultifying atmosphere of a small town comes through dismally clear in “The King is always above the people”. The blind man’s story in “Parakeets” is a moving one, seemingly bordering on magic realism. “That First Time” plays on the emotions involved in going back, only to have the reader realise there is no going back.
Some stories the reader can and does immediately empathise with, as in “Procreate, Generate” despite the fact that the narratives all hold deliberate detachment. “Room After Room” is stream of consciousness, a well- powered idea, disturbing in content. While “The Tunnel” is a Holden Caulfield-meets-Sardar-in-train, “Valets” is about the underdog getting his moment of glory, however brief.
“Where East Meets West” shows Nell Freudenberger with her characteristic empathy to PNLU… people not like us.
And easily the most charming in the collection is Yiyun Li’s “House Fire”, where six feisty “aunties” turned soft shoes, meet a man and a case that flummoxes them. As the man states the facts of his situation, the very private lives of the elderly women start to unpleat themselves to the reader.
Kaleidoscope
So, ultimately, what fuels America’s imagination, what drives Americans young and old, what makes them laugh, exult, cry, despair? Why, the very stuff of life; of young love, old comforts, of betrayal, of the innocence of children, the struggle to find one’s niche. Coping with the inevitability of life’s processes. And yes, the immigrant experience, of course.
It’s just that this particular kaleidoscope has been put together by young America. More power to their pens.
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