Roanoke Times Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc. DATE: SUNDAY, December 5, 1993 TAG: 9312130299 SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: D4 EDITION: METRO SOURCE: Reviewed by LANA WHITED DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
An anthology of fiction by North Carolina writers and an anthology of the nation's premiere short fiction would contain many of the same names: Alice Adams, Maya Angelou, Doris Betts, Fred Chappell, Clyde Edgerton, Kaye Gibbons, Allan Gurganus, Randall Kenan, Jill McCorkle, Tim McLaurin, Reynolds Price, Lee Smith, Elizabeth Spencer.
Selections by these authors and nine others are collected in ``The Rough Road Home,'' edited by longtime Greensboro News & Record book review editor Robert Gingher.
Gingher chose short fiction centered on the theme of the returning wayfarer. ``Our best narratives,'' he maintains, ``explore and elaborate upon the escape from and return to home.'' The writers anthologized by Gingher have, he says, ``found wings to fly away from home only to return imaginatively and behold it with new eyes.''
The book's thematic rationale forces a compromise - this is not a ``best of'' anthology. If it were, Gingher would certainly have chosen differently: Jill McCorkle's ``Waiting for Hard Times to End'' rather than ``Man Watcher,'' any of a dozen Lee Smith samples rather than ``The Bubba Stories.''But even in a ``best of'' anthology, Gingher might have chosen the same Doris Betts story, ``This is the Only Time I'll Tell It'' (originally published in 1977), a stunning morality tale with the religious profundity of Flannery O'Connor and the humanitarian spirit of George Eliot's ``Silas Marner.'' The story of an unwanted child raised by a tightly knit Presbyterian community, it alone is worth the price of the book.
One suspects, though, that the above-average stories of North Carolina writers are superior to the good stories of many others, and there is much in the collection to be enjoyed. For holiday shoppers with an eye out for book lovers' presents, this may very well be the ticket.
Lana Whited teaches English and journalism at Ferrum College and is an alumna of the Hollins College creative writing program.
by CNB