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Literary Review
Arresting stories
K. KUNHIKRISHNAN
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A collection which showcases the best stories published in the U.S. and Canada in 2007.
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The O. Henry Prize Stories 2007, edited by Laura Furman, Anchor Books, Random House, $14.95.
The O. Henry Prize is one of the most coveted among the awards for short fiction published in the U.S. and Canadian magazines. From among the 20 stories short-listed by the editor, three renowned writers, Charles D’Ambrasio, Ursula K. Le Guin and Lily Tuck, have selected the best three. The stories reverberate with their own unique, rational terrain, creating an effect of wholeness and harmony. Selections include renowned (Alice Munro, William Trevor, Adam Haslitt ) and upcoming writers. The selections are from The New Yorker (3), McSweeny’s Quarterly (2), and Manoa (2) and the not so well known ones like Bloom, Fence, Noon and Subtropics among others. Two jury members, Charles D’Ambrasio and Lily Tuck, select William Trevor’s “The Room” as the best story while Ursula K. Le Guin finds Eddie Chuculate’s “Galveston Bay” as her favourite.
The stories deal with a variety of themes like love and deception, war, class distinction, loneliness and old age, and ghosts. Each story has a lyrical charm in its plot, creating its own world and a unity of effect. The amazing range and dynamism of genres, styles and themes portraying the complexity of human relations make the collection one of the best profiles of the American short fiction.
Universal themes
The stories are set in distant places like Vietnam, Africa and New Zealand besides different States and seasons in America and bring out the universality of space and time. “The Room” is about deception and adultery; The story has been structured to evoke the tensions of a bad marriage and to establish the mood, unhappiness and expectations. Betrayal is used as a catharsis in the lucid narration. “Galveston Bay, 1826” by Eddie Chuculate reads like a fable, full of fantasy: two engineers set off to The Great Lake. Their adventure and enjoyment of it have been portrayed with telling precision of style. Three stories have war as the background: Joan Silber’s “War Buddies” is about two civilian engineers who were together in Vietnam to solve a technical problem. In “Cherubs” by Justin Dymond, the war comes as a presence in the background at a wedding in France. “The Gift of Years” by Vu Tran sums up the universal human experience in a heartrending manner. It is an artfully woven masterpiece exemplifying the absolute best in craft. A South Vietnamese soldier returns to his family after war to see that unsettling changes had happened in his family during his absence. He is suspicious that his youngest daughter had murdered her husband. Years later, he feels distant but has insight and he asks her questions without expecting explanations.
Eclectic treatment
The relationship between aging parents and children is dealt with in “The Duchess of Albany” by Christine Schutt and “Mudder Tongue” by Brian Evenson. In “Djamilla” a young American falls in love with a beautiful young unmarried African tribal woman. It is an intense love story. In Jan Ellison’s “The Company of Men”, Catherine, the narrator, meets two young travellers in New Zealand and again in Sydney; they are uncommitted with a beautiful relationship. “The Scent of Cinnamon” by Charles Lambert, set in the 19th century American West, is about longing and loneliness. The veteran Alice Munro’s famous “The View From Castle Rock” is a part of her autobiographical novel.
The eclectic collection does not carry any piece of satire or humour, a common feature in the earlier volumes. It demonstrates that short fiction is powerful and dynamic and has a universal appeal.
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