The O. Henry Prize Stories 100th Anniversary Edition (2019)

August 1, 2019

Since 1918, the O. Henry Awards have celebrated the best short fiction published in North American periodicals each year. As with previous collections in the series, this 100th anniversary edition is less concerned with setting standards for a short story canon than showcasing a range of up-to-the-minute fiction and offering a look at subjects that interest contemporary writers. The majority of the 20 featured stories build on how identity--social, racial, cultural, familial, sexual, and otherwise--forms and shifts. While works in translation are not eligible for inclusion, the stories chosen by editor Furman (founding editor, American Short Fiction), with novelist judges Lynn Freed, Elizabeth Strout, and Lara Vapnyar, explore a range of cultures, eras, and experience. From John Edgar Wideman's "Maps and Ledgers," an intergenerational tale of code switching pinned to a young black professor's memories of his grandmother's elegant handwriting, to adolescent Jem's intrepid attempts to puzzle out the world of adults in Sarah Hall's "Goodnight Nobody," to the subtle navigation of race and relationship over dinner in Weike Wang's "Omakase," this eclectic anthology is sometimes uneven but intriguing throughout. VERDICT A solid inclusion for libraries with strong contemporary fiction collections.--Lisa Peet, Library Journal

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 15, 2019
Centenary volume of the esteemed short fiction annual, filled with standouts. As the publisher writes, with welcome transparency, in an opening note, the choices in this volume are made by series editor and novelist/memoirist Furman (Ordinary Paradise, 1998, etc.); the jurors--in this case, Lara Vapnyar, Lynn Freed, and Elizabeth Strout--pick and comment on their favorite submission among the 20 Furman proffers. That understood, Furman appears to have broad tastes and no fear of sudden violence, something many of the stories exhibit. Perhaps the best--as with most prize volumes, especially those of limited scope, there's not really a bad story in the bunch, but some are naturally enough better than others--is Canadian author Alexander MacLeod's searing "Lagomorph," whose title commemorates an unusually long-lived rabbit whose days are nearly ended by an unwonted visit outdoors and an encounter there with a hungry snake. The metaphor could be obvious in a story whose guiding arc is the deterioration of a long marriage, but MacLeod keeps his eye on the rabbit and firm control over a story packed with meaning: "I couldn't feel anything out of place, and couldn't tell if there was something else wrong, something broken deeper inside of him." Speaking of control, Souvankham Thammavongsa turns the tables nicely with her story "Slingshot," depicting a 70-year-old woman whose relationship with a 32-year-old man is sexual and sensual but whose terms she sets, quietly rebuking the noisy and nosy: "Old is a thing that happened outside," thinks her narrator when one bore reminds her of the age difference. The violence returns in John Edgar Wideman's self-assured "Maps and Ledgers," concerning a rising African American academic whose daily burden is by no means lessened when his father kills a man, while Rachel Kondo's "Girl of Few Seasons" lays a memorable foundation for the reasons why a Vietnam-bound Hawaiian man must kill his flock of homing pigeons, "a steady heartbeat in his hands." Essential, as always, for buffs and students of the modern short story.

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