Customer Reviews

The O. Henry Prize Stories 2007: The Best Stories of the Year

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Since 1919, the O. Henry Prize has meant excellence in literary short fiction. To win an O. Henry is the pinnacle achievement in a short story author's life. Named after William Sydney Porter (1862-1910), better known to readers as O. Henry, the prize was conceived in 1918 by his friends, members of the elite Twilight Club, later renamed the Society of Arts and Letters, in order to honor him and strengthen the art of the short story.

The O. Henry Prize Stories for 2007 are some of the best literary fiction in North America. These authors convey more emotion in a single paragraph than many authors do in an entire book. Take for example,

-- The Scent of Cinnamon by Charles Lambert. The author explores the themes of loneliness and the abandonment of dreams even while embracing them.

-- In a Bear's Eye by Yannick Murphy, grief, loss and acceptance are explored in a style made all the more heart wrenching by its simplicity.

-- In The Gift of Years by Vu Tran, a father returns from battle only to see the unsettling changes the war and his own absence wrought on his family. But with distance also comes insight, however unwelcome.

The selected stories encapsulate the human experience in both shocking and poignant terms. Clever and deft at their craft, the authors of these stories exemplify the absolute best in the written word.

Armchair Interviews says: Lucky are those who love outstanding short stories!

As with any collection of short stories, few readers will fall in love with every single entry. Stories, unlike people, are not all created equal. It is admittedly quite tempting to break out the slings and arrows and take cheap shots at those stories that, in my estimation, didn't measure up. But it's much more satisfying to stay positive and focus on the praiseworthy. So, without further ado, the following stories are real "prize winners" in my book:

"The Scent of Cinamon" by Charles Lambert

A truly strange, and some might say 'haunting', kind of love story.

"Summer, With Twins" by Rebecca Curtis

Every character is masterfully crafted, and the twins are so deviously immoral I wanted to reach through the page and give them what for. The twins exhibit all the corrupt sensibilities of the financial elite. Their privileged upbringing leaves them oblivious to the harm pure capitalism inflicts on others, particularly on our lovely heroine.

"The Gift of Years" by Vu Tran

Beautifully written! A modern-day masterpiece about a Vietmanese soldier who tries to shelter his curious daughter from the realities of war. Meanwhile, only the passage of time can shelter him from the realities of his daughter's troubled life. A diamond among gems!

"A New Kind of Gravity" by Andrew Foster Altschul

Every once in a while (unfortunately, not often enough), you read a story that delivers a punch in the gut that for some odd reason, you want to experience over and over again. This story of a shelter for battered women, as told through the eyes of a security guard, delivers such a powerful blow. Our hero sympathizes with the women and children, and seethes with anger at the men who victimized them with their twisted sense of love. By no means a "pleasant" read, and perhaps not a story you'd like to read at the beach, but by all means a "must" read.

Honorable Mention:

"The Diarist" by Richard McCann

"Mudder Tongue" by Brian Evenson

Every year for the past 10+ years I have read both the O. Henry Prize Stories anthology and The Best American Short Stories anthology. My main complaint about O. Henry series editor Laura Furman has been her tendency to pick stories which focus on loss, illness, death and other depressing subjects. I won't be so bold as to claim she has read these criticisms, but this year she did produce a much more well-rounded selection of stories that more fully illustrate the possibilities of the short story form. By doing so, she has come much closer to realizing the O. Henry anthology's subtitle of "The Best Stories of the Year".

In fact, this volume contains the best story I have read in several years, although the prize jury felt otherwise: Charles Lambert's "The Scent of Cinnamon". While other stories in the anthology push the creative boundaries of the short story form, Lambert's story is a classic short story in the O. Henry mold, complete with a surprise revealed at the end that adds a whole new dimension to what you have just read. The story is not one word longer than it should be, and every word is meaningful and well-chosen. The portrayal of longing amidst isolation is powerfully moving. This story is a work of art which should be taught in schools as a model of the form.

Two other very different stories that I also especially enjoyed are:

-- Eddie Chuculate's "Galveston Bay, 1826", which reads like a written-down oral history of an Indian's journey across other tribes' lands in Texas and the amazing sights and events that he encounters; and

-- Susan Straight's "El Ojo de Aqua", which describes the travails of an elderly poor migrant black worker.

While everyone will have their own favorites, I do feel that editor Laura Furman has assembled her strongest collection of stories to date. I highly recommend this volume, and short stories in general, as they are the perfect complements to a busy lifestyle. Even those folks with little time to read should be able to find time on occasion to enjoy a well-written short story, and this volume contains many.

I read all of the stories in this very good collection aloud to my wife. It's an interesting experience to compare reading stories aloud with reading the same stories to oneself -- and of course comparing the reactions of reader and listener.

Here are a few of our reactions:

Charles Lambert, "The Scent of Cinnamon", is a love story, written in a lyrical style set off by direct, commonplace letters, that capture the mood of the two main characters. It's a wonderful story to read aloud, and the surprise twist at the end makes it our joint favorite of the collection. (We rented, and greatly enjoyed, Mississippi Mermaid, which Lambert credited with inspiring the story's "visual influence".)

Andrew Foster Altschul, "A Different Kind of Gravity", is a wonderfully insightful story of a guard at a woman's shelter, who finds great difficulty in dealing with domestic violence and with the terrible power of love between abused and abusers. The story was very easy to read as a technical matter, but made a deep emotional impact on reader and listener.

Alice Munro, "The View from Castle Rock", is a fact based story by a master writer; Munro's prose is wonderful to read aloud -- it reminded me of the early Henry James style of books like "Daisy Miller." Munro writes: "There is a great deal more 'reality' than I usually work with, but once I got them on board the ship, the characters took over in a way that delighted me." Both reader and listener were delighted as well.

Joan Silber, "War Buddies", is a wonderful "story", as opposed to a "performance", a realistic portrayal of two extremely odd engineers grappling with a serious problem during the Vietnam War. It reads beautifully, and both reader and listener were captured by our memories and new impressions.

William Trevor, "The Room", is much more of a literary performance, and two of the jurors spend a fair amount of ink analyzing the strengths of the piece. It reads easily, but it is very easy to miss the importance of simple passages -- I found it much more satisfying to reread it later to myself.

Eddie Chuculate, "Galveston Bay, 1826" is a travelogue, and as great travellers, both my wife and I enjoyed it greatly. The style is smooth and calm, tripping off the tongue, but with depths that resonated with our own travel experiences. "Three arrows pointing upward floated past Old Bull at eye level, followed by a limp swamp rat and Red Moon's appaloosa, upside down." Great stuff.

*****

We liked the other stories less than these, but all of them had passages that we found greatly appealing.

Robert C. Ross 2010

I read these every year and I can always find excellent stories and then some that don't really appeal to me. But I would guess it's all a matter of taste.

Here are my favorites:

The Gift of Years by Vu Tran.

City Visit by Adam Haslett

A New kind of Gravity by Andrew Foster Altschul. This one was my favorite out of all of them. It's a great story about a guy who works at a battered women's shelter.

As usual, the O Henry Awards are pretty weak. That's not to say that there aren't some good stories (and one really great one) contained, it's just that they try too hard to get an eclectic mix and skip out on what might be the 'best' for what is 'most different.'