Prize Stories 1986: The O. Henry Awards

Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/ Doubleday, 1986. Copyright © 1986 . Trade Paperback. Very Good. 8vo or 8° (Medium Octavo): 7¾" x 9¾" tall. 274 pp. Solidly bound copy with moderate external wear, crisp pages and clean text. Creased spine. Bottom right corner of front cover is creased. From The tellers of these 19 tales constitute a pantheon of rising or already established young writers, including first-prize winner Alice Walker, with "Kindred Spirits," a vignette about a young black woman returning home after divorcing her white husband, and special-award winner Joyce Carol Oates, whose "Master Race" recounts in spare and elegant prose the sexual assault in Germany of a youngish American academic by a black G.I. In many ways more compelling, however, are Bobbie Ann Mason's "Big Bertha Stories," a blinding insight into the mind of a man hounded by memories of Vietnam; John L'Heureux's "The Comedian," a metaphysical tour de force about a standup comic who becomes pregnant with a baby whose blithe in utero singing drowns out the arguments for abortion; Stephanie Vaughn's "Kid MacArthur," a boy growing up in an army family, learning to use guns before pencils, reluctantly going off to war and returning a militant vegetarian, shrinking from any violation of flesh. These and several other stories capture and involve the reader: they are written with grace, authority and bitter knowledge, and despite their verbal brevity cast a long shadow that is deeply etched and hard to dispel. BOMC selection. 1986 This 66th volume in the O. Henry-award series gives first prize to "Kindred Spirits," a personal, subtle story of family perceptions by Alice Walker. The collection also contains solid entries by such well-known authors as Alice Adams, Bobbie Ann Mason, Gordon Lish, and Joyce Carol Oates (who is honored with a Special Award for Continuing Achievement for her haunting story "Master Race"). There are also some gems from newcomers: for example, Deborah Eisenberg's "Transactions in a Foreign Currency," set in chilly Montreal, follows a woman's poignant realization of her lover's inability to commit himself to her. So: nothing sizzling, but many finely crafted pieces forming a most worthwhile whole. Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., Va. 1986.