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Best of the South: From Ten Years of New Stories from the South by Anne Tyler, Shannon Ravenel
pearseanderson's review
2.0
I found the majority of these stories to be disappointing. I skipped a bunch and wavered on others (in retrospect, I should have skipped them). Y'know what saved this collection? The first third, which included:
“After Moore” by Mary Hood, published in The Georgia Review
“The Watch” by Rick Bass, published in The Quarterly
Read those. Skip the rest! They aren't awful, they just aren't worth the time, IMO.
“After Moore” by Mary Hood, published in The Georgia Review
“The Watch” by Rick Bass, published in The Quarterly
Read those. Skip the rest! They aren't awful, they just aren't worth the time, IMO.
djrmelvin's review
4.0
A wonderful collection of "the best" short stories from the annual anthology New Stories From The South, this is a collection of writings from contemporary writers that all have their roots, if not their body, in the South. A few are Southern-Gothic, a few are simple slice-of-life, and few almost fall into historical fiction territory. They are all extremely well told short stories, never failing to honor what I think is the one rule of this genre: Clarity. No matter how soft and fuzzy a character might be (and with several of these stories dealing with the down side of aging, there's a lot of fuzzy thinking going on), the plot can not meander. No matter how bucolic the setting, the jagged edges of nature must be shown. A good short story has no room for subplot, superfluous characters, or over blown description. Every one of these stories packs the intensity of a novel in so many fewer words.
My only criticism of this book (and what lowered it from five to four stars) is not in the story telling, but the story collection. Having a decade of work to choose from, it seems rather odd that there's so much repetition of theme. There are too many stories that focus on death, decay, or the darker side of the South's past. All of those make for good stories, but certainly there are talented writers who write about the young South, the one that continues to remake itself no matter how many times it gets blown down or financially ruined.
My favorite stories in this book are "Sheep" a story of a man caught up in a legal system and friendships that control his future; "Those Deep Elm Brown's Ferry Blues" by William Gay that gets into the mind of a man with Altzheimers so well that you'll have a whole new fear of that disease; and "Intervention", a story that looks at the "one half of a whole" idea of love and doesn't look away when it gets ugly.
My only criticism of this book (and what lowered it from five to four stars) is not in the story telling, but the story collection. Having a decade of work to choose from, it seems rather odd that there's so much repetition of theme. There are too many stories that focus on death, decay, or the darker side of the South's past. All of those make for good stories, but certainly there are talented writers who write about the young South, the one that continues to remake itself no matter how many times it gets blown down or financially ruined.
My favorite stories in this book are "Sheep" a story of a man caught up in a legal system and friendships that control his future; "Those Deep Elm Brown's Ferry Blues" by William Gay that gets into the mind of a man with Altzheimers so well that you'll have a whole new fear of that disease; and "Intervention", a story that looks at the "one half of a whole" idea of love and doesn't look away when it gets ugly.
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