| Title | : | The O. Henry Prize Stories 2019 |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | - |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780525565536 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 457 |
| Publication | : | First published September 1, 2019 |
The O. Henry Prize Stories 2019--continuing a century-long tradition of cutting-edge literary excellence--contains twenty prize-winning stories chosen from the thousands published in magazines over the previous year. The winning writers are an impressive mix of celebrated names and new, emerging voices. Their stories evoke lives both near and distant, in settings ranging from Jamaica, Houston, and Hawaii to a Turkish coal mine and a drought-ridden Northwestern farm, and feature an engaging array of characters, including Laotian refugees, a Columbian kidnap victim, an eccentric Irish schoolteacher, a woman haunted by a house that cleans itself, and a strangely long-lived rabbit. The uniformly breathtaking stories are accompanied by essays from the eminent jurors on their favorites, observations from the winning writers on what inspired them, and an extensive resource list of magazines.
Prize Jurors 2019: Lynn Freed, Elizabeth Strout, Lara Vapynar
The O. Henry Prize Stories 2019 Reviews
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As might be expected with an anthology like this, there's a range of story, and for me, at least, it is pretty near impossible to imagine thoroughly enjoying each and every story within that range. However, there were several that really shone masterfully. No Spanish, about a father who decrees that his Basque family will speak only that language, now that it has been outlawed, despite the fact none of them speak their ancestral tongue at the moment. It's comic and sad and absurd and political, the daughter rebelling against the rebellion. Girl of Few Seasons was a heart-breaker. An impoverished young Hawaiian man carries the guilt for his sister's mental infirmity to the point where he opts to serve in Vietnam only so it will allow him a flight to the island where his sister is confined in an institution he has been unable to visit. Julia and Sunny was an enjoyable change of pace, written in second person plural that felt natural despite its off-centred sound to the ear. It's about a couple that witnesses the breakup of two of their best friends. It's such a smooth read that the lack of real gravity (for me, at least) in this story made it all the more of a marvel at how compelled I was to turn the pages. Omakase was similar, a small story of a couple going out to dinner at a Japanese restaurant, infusing racial undercurrents and the child of immigrant influence to successfully build tension in the relationship, so that the reader wonders if this couple will survive. Unstuck was also intriguing, a woman who believes her house is haunted, quite possibly by the unseen person who rescued after she'd gotten stuck in a tight slot canyon. Aguacero, about the daughter of Colombian immigrants encountering a Colombian ex-pat, both of them traumatized by what their ancestral country's cruel traumas, and therefore drawn to each other despite the age difference and the young woman's skepticism about the man's motives. And Lagomorph, about a man's relationship with a rabbit. Haha. OK, the family rabbit, but now the kids are gone, and he and his wife have divorced, and this rabbit continues to linger on somewhat enigmatically, and a certain ambivalence in the man's affection for it perhaps mirroring the ambivalence he felt in his marriage once he and his wife were alone with each other.
It was a diverse collection, with enough successful stories, in an array of styles, that I found it really satisfying despite the few stories that didn't grab me. -
I've been reading the O. Henry Prize Stories and Best American Short Stories for over 10 years, and this is by far the strongest collection yet. I will likely reread 12 of the 20 stories. My favourites were by Tessa Hadley, Alexia Arthurs, and Weike Wang. Flowers for America by Doua Thao was almost a novella, and memorable.
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I enjoy reading short stories. They are compact and pack a punch. As a reader, a realistic, even melancholy story resonates with me.
So when I came across this collection of short stories at my local library it didn't take much convincing for me to borrow.
Ok, so no reader will like each and every story in a compilation. Nonetheless, I expected more from such an exalted collection.
To be sure, there were a several standouts which made reading the entire book worthwhile.
The collection is noticeable for another reason, the geographical breadth of the authors. While all stories must be written originally in English quite a few are set in non-English speaking countries such as Laos, Turkey, etc.
Despite my three stars I recommend this book to readers whom enjoy short stories. Finding that one special story makes the effort to read all the others worthwhile! -
My first foray into short stories was quite enjoyable.
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Trigger. Warning
While there are a few wonderful stories in this collection and many with incredibly beautiful prose, , there are more than a few that contain scenes of graphic, horrific violence to small animals. Coincidence? I think not. I'm an avid reader of short story collections in many different genres for over 30 years and I've never read a collection containing more stories that left me sickened. The only conclusion I can draw is that the person who selected the stories gets a kick out of this. Nauseating. -
My plan was to finish this before 2019 ended but it took me f o r e v e r to get through Flowers for America and then the last few stories because I just didn't care anymore. For me, all of the powerful and poignant stories lived in the first half of the book. What resonates with me? Women, teen girls, young girls, relationships between women, sex and sexuality. The stories I bookmarked: Funny Little Snake, Julia and Sunny, Unstuck, Bad Girl, Omakase, Prime (maybe my fave?), and The Shrew Tree.
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The best story was "Prime". That one was a 5/5 on its own because of its mystic nature. The other stories ranged from boring to okay. Two interesting ones were "The Shew Tree" and "Lagomorph". The rest are just not particularly profound.
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Favorite stories: "Bad Girl" by Valerie O'Riordan, "Omakase" by Weike Wang, "Lagomorph" by Alexander MacLeod
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(This was an ARC provided in exchange for a fair review.)
I love short story collections. They are great starting point for exploring new writers; they are easy to pick up and read (not necessary to stay up all night!); and the variety makes for interesting reading.
Two of the stories first appeared in The New Yorker and I had, by chance, read both of them. And enjoyed them again. Funny Little Snake was both a heart-rending and a heart-warming tale of parenting & marriage gone wrong. A young woman & an unrelated child find a connection through the drama that surprisingly unites them. Omakase was totally different: the interaction of a Chinese-American woman & her white American boyfriend with the Japanese sushi chef feeding them. All her doubts come to the fore, all the doubts, embarrassments and pride about a partner, heightened by the events of the dining experience.
These stories cover the melancholy of the mismatched ages in a sexual dalliance (Slingshot), or the mismatched perceptions of two teens in The Shrew Tree, or the lengths Laotian refugees in Thailand go through to survive in Flowers for America, the view of a couple’s evolving relationship through the life of their pet rabbit (Lagomorph) and a married couple’s disorientation when their ideal couple divorces (Julia & Sunny). A young black man trying to move beyond his own family’s history comes to recognize that his pretense doesn’t change his life (Maps & Ledgers), just as a father’s decree that the family will learn Basque doesn’t stop his daughter’s yearning for the sounds of Spanish (No Spanish).
And there are a couple of oddly amusing stories to lighten the tone. Unstuck tells of the aftermath of a woman getting stuck in a canyon of the Middle Fork of the Leprechaun River, and her house starts cleaning itself. Synchronicity combines buffalo and survivalists in Montana with normal folk in Western Washington to strange effect.
Bad Girl and Goodnight Nobody both deal with girls dealing with the rough side of life. Aguacero and Soma deal with different aspects of political dissent while Mr. Can’aan deals with recapturing family history.
And then there is the very sad story of A Girl of Few Seasons, where a moment’s actions have haunted a young man the rest of his life.
I enjoyed every story, each for its own reasons. I did find that there seemed to be an overlying atmosphere of sadness in many of these tales: not necessarily a bad thing.
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I find it difficult to review anthology collections, because inevitably there were will be stories you enjoy and stories you don’t. Averaged together thIS anthology was probably just okay, but I think that’s an unfair assessment of a collection that had its fair share of gems, duds, and meh’s. I tended to like the stories that had more narrative tension, and were grounded firmly on characters’ relationships. “Omakase” was one of the better ones for that reason, depicting an uncomfortable Omakase date which revealed quite a lot about the dining couple. Some of the other stories I enjoyed were “Funny Little Snake” (the relationships shown here were between mom, stepmom, and daughter, and as the story unfolds you’ll find your heart both breaking and warming) and “Julia and Sunny” (a very cleverly told story, as a couple recounts the dissolution of their friends’ marriage – it was almost gossipy in its tone, but utterly compelling). There were some not so good ones, where I found the style too distracting (“Maps and Ledgers” really could have used more punctuation IMO) or I felt like I was missing the point (“Unstuck” was… a metaphor? A ghost story? Just didn’t land with me). I did appreciate the diversity of the curation though, as the authors and settings came from around the world. I would probably give it 2.5 stars, but I rounded up for the overall experience.
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The usual high quality work and, keeping with the trend of the past few years, with more diversity than ever. This not only includes a diversity of authorship but of national origin and notably of narrative voices. There was a time when distinguishing between authors almost required one to look frequently and the header on the page to see that the author's name was different from the one in the preceding story. This is no longer true. I can't decide whether the stories are actually any better or if the quality is the same. Maybe even slightly worse? If there is a difference, it's marginal at most.
A good many years ago, one of my students asked me who my favorite authors were. "Once you reach 40," I told him, "if you've done a diligent job of reading, and you've been thoughtful in your selections and challenged yourself, you no longer have favorites." Or as I've heard many mature writers say, it's who you're reading at the moment. -
***½ this year. I read this collection most years, and was thrilled to win a copy in a Goodreads giveaway!
One thing I love about the O. Henry Prize collection each year is the author insights at the back of the book. While this year's collection wasn't un-putdowanable for me, there were a few standout stories that I really enjoyed and all of the stories are well written. -
My favorite part of this book was the myriad of voices the editors selected; characters were diverse and there were several stories about people of color and from all around the world— my favorite stories were “Julia and Sunny,” “Soma,” and “Prime.”
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I like the following stories:
"Funny Little Snake" by Tessa Hadley, "Aguacero" by Patricia Engel, "The Shrew Tree" by Liza Ward, "Flowers for America" by Duoa Thao, and "Lagomorph" by Alexander MacLeod. -
Really nice collection of stories with a strikingly diverse set of voices.
Top five:
Julia and Sunny - Sarah Shun-lien Bynum
Unstuck - Stephanie Reents
The Shrew Tree - Liza Ward
Lagomorph - Alexander MacLeod
Maps and Ledgers - John Edgar Wideman -
As far as anthologies go, this one is decent. It introduced me to a few writers whose longer work I'd like to read. The stories by Moira McCavana, Sarah Hall, Alexander MacLeod, Liza Ward, Souvankham Thammavongsa, and Doua Thao were my favourites.
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Half the stories were deserving.
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The Bryan Washington and John Edgar Wideman stories in particular!
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Fantastic. O. Henry Prize Stories are reliably good stories.
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A wonderful collection of short story fiction - now I have to start reading previous editions!
