The Henfield Prize Stories - Softcover

Twenty generally well-crafted stories by award-winning participants of various university writing programs take a fresh look at the American family. Sue Miller's narrator (who later is transplanted to Miller's novel The Good Mother ) tells of the death by drowning of an adored aunt, only five years the narrator's senior, whose love of life and independent spirit estranges her from her staid New England relatives. Suzanne Juergensen's uncommitted, 30-something college professor panics when her lover, a minor, proposes marriage and his parents show up at her apartment. Some stories, like Walter Mosley's ironic depiction of a knife fight at a Houston party, center on a particular "crowd" of intimates as family. But the compilation's most prevalent notions, forcibly and honestly communicated, are those of stubborn isolation and the yearning for lasting kinship. Writes Ethan Canin, "There was something in beating his father that was like the toppling of an ancient king. . . . But this is my father, he thought. Then: This is my life. . . . What can you do? These are clouds above us, and below us there is ice and the earth."
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The Henfield Prize is something extraordinary; recognition and support for unknown and unpublished writers, chosen from outstanding students in U.S. writing programs. This anthology of the finest winning pieces since the award's inception in 1980 includes well-known authors Sue Miller, Harriet Doerr, Mona Simpson, and Ethan Canin. Libraries may already own the novels and collections in which these stories were eventually published. There are also plenty of exciting new works, including Suzanne Juergensen's "Physics" and Jennifer Coke's "Eye Water." This collection brims with a marvelous diversity of fictions, a sign of the vitality of our often maligned writing programs and a tribute to the wisdom of the Henfield Foundation. For libraries that support either writing programs or a community of writers.
- Brian Kenney, St. John's Univ. Lib., Jamaica, N.Y.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.