Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 17, 1994 TAG: 9404190179
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: D-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Edited by Shannon Ravenel. Algonquin. $11.95 (trade paper).
The Best American Short Stories, 1993.
Edited by Louise Erdrich. Houghton, Mifflin. $10.95 (trade paper); $21.95 (hard cover).
I always look forward to these annual collections, especially - I must admit - Algonquin's "New Stories From the South." But I don't think I've enjoyed any other year's editions as much as 1993's. The diversity, the excitement and the breadth in 1993's collections are amazing.
For one thing, only one story _ Toney Earley's wonderful, funny "Charlotte" - appears, deservedly, in both collections. For another, both annual editors have (thank goodness!) looked beyond The New Yorker for their selections. Louise Erdrich even deigns to include a science fiction story: Harlan Ellison's "The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore," which is, in my opinion, among the collection's most original and challenging inclusions. But then there are many other original and challenging inclusions in each collection, too. From "The Best," I would recommend most highly Mary Gaitskill's "The Girl on the Plane," Susan Power's "Red Moccasins," and Lorrie Moore's "Terrific Mother." From "New Stories," Barbara Hudson's "Selling Whiskers," Elizabeth Hunnewell's "Family Planning," and Pinckney Benedict's "Bounty."
And from each collection, the Wendell Berry story: "A Jonquil for Mary Penn" in "New Stories" and "Pray Without Ceasing" in "The Best." These recommendations are merely personal preferences, of course. Other readers will have their own _ there's just so much richness here!
But I did notice (I think) a literary trend among these stories, and it's a trend worth noticing. Most of these stories are happy. They're hopeful and funny - often, like "Charlotte" and "Terrific Mother," laugh-out-loud funny. They're warm-hearted and generous, full of the love of family and the milk of human kindness. Even those stories that deal with tragedy and violence end on a positive note.
This is not to say that these stories are not serious, tough-minded, and brutally honest. They are that, too. There's not a single, simple-minded, saccharine sentence among 'em. But they are, for the most part, missing that miserable, low-life angst that's characterized so much of our recent writing. That's kind of nice; kind of a good sign, I think, for the nation's psyche. I hope I'm right.
- MONTY S. LEITCH
Sheldon & Mrs. Levine: An Excruciating Correspondence.
A Parody by Sam Bobrick and Julie Stein. Price, Stern, Sloan. $14.95.
Hurrah! Here's another chance to read other people's mail. I hope Nick\ Bantok has a sense of humor so he can enjoy this amusing spoof of his stories\ of Griffin and Sabine.
Sheldon Levine has fled New York and disappeared into the wilds of Los Angeles, much to the dismay of his ever-loving mother Doris. From New\ Rochelle she plagues him (via the Missing Persons Bureau) with postcards and\ letters giving her usual good advice, complaints and criticism. After all, what\ is a mother for? Unlike Bantok's creations, these two are real, in fact\ recognizable immediately. But then, even after Sheldon moves and changes his\ name in order to escape, the missives continue to reach him from the\ "spiritually enlightened" and "metaphysically unleashed" Doris. What is going\ on?
If you have 15 or 20 minutes to read this slight book, you can find out\ . . . up to a point. Then Bobrick and Stein prove that they too can be ambiguous and can present more questions than answers. There is little doubt that\ volume two will appear before long to continue this "excruciating\ correspondence." I can't wait.
- LYNN ECKMAN
HOPE WILL ANSWER. By Susan B. Kelly. Charles Scribner's Sons. $20.
CREEPING JENNY. By John Sherwood. Charles Scribner's Sons. $20.
THE CEREAL MURDERS, A Culinary Mystery. By Diane Mott Davidson. Bantam Books. $19.95.
DEATH AND THE OXFORD BOX. By Veronica Stallwood. Charles Scribner's Sons. $20.
The fast-growing stock of mystery novels with female protagonists gets another boost with publication of these four. Davidson is an American writer; U.S. release of "Hope Will Answer," "Creeping Jenny" and "Death and the Oxford Box" follows by a few months their publication in Britain.
All fall into the "cozy" category. But if their respective heroines are the spiritual-literary heirs of Miss Marple, they are definitely not of her generation.
None is married, but they're nobody's spinster aunts. Each is pursuing her own career outside the home, as they say. The various themes and subthemes - homosexuality, terrorism, environmentalism, messy divorce - reflect preoccupations of the 1990s.
Alison Hope (Kelly's character), like Goldy Bear (Davidson's), has a Significant Other, to whom she is not wed, of the opposite sex. Ms. Bear is a divorcee. Ms. Hope is a computer consultant; Ms. Bear a caterer; Celia Grant (Sherwood's character) a garden-center owner; Kate Ivory (Stallwood's) a novelist.
Despite its cutesy title, "The Cereal Murders" has a serious side, including a witty and unsympathetic portrayal of overaggressive parents pressuring their adolescent children to achieve what they themselves didn't or couldn't.
Sherwood's tale of eco-terrorism in "Creeping Jenny" begins strongly, and has a reasonably inventive premise, but gets slapdash silly toward the end.
"Hope Will Answer" is perhaps the best pure mystery - or, more accurately, mysteries - of the lot. The gimmick here is the two-career couple. Alison Hope, doing computer-consulting in London, works on one mystery, while her main squeeze, police Inspector Nick Trevellyan, stays home in the Hop Valley to work on another. Otherwise, the two plot lines are unconnected.
"Death and the Oxford Box" struck me as a weak effort. For believability to wane near the end of a story, as its author struggles for the climactic scene and a tying-up of loose ends in the plot, is a common hazard of the genre. In "Death and the Oxford Box," that descent begins uncommonly early.
\ Monty S. Leitch is a columnist for this newspaper.\ Lynn Eckman teaches at Roanoke College.\ Geoff Seamans is associate editor of the editorial page.
by CNB