Algonquin’s 25th Anniversary Edition of their great New Stories from the South anthology hit the shelves last week, this time edited by none other than Amy Hempel, who knows a thing or two about stories, her geographical origins notwithstanding. Her Collected Stories was one of my favorite books of 2007, and still gets pulled off of the shelf from time to time.
Hempel selects twenty-five stories, some from writers you know – Dorothy Allison, Padgett Powell, Ron Rash, and one of my favorites, Wendell Berry. Some are relative unknowns, to me at least, like Adam Atlas, whose story “New Year’s Weekend” opens the collection. The unnamed narrator, an American living in Naples, Italy, cuts off the end of his thumb making a lasagna a couple of days before New Year’s. The admitting nurse tells him that he can’t be operated on for three days, but to admit himself early to make sure he gets a bed. So he admits himself and watches from the hand surgery ward as a bevy of fingerless or thumbless characters – children, parents, delinquents – parade through the ward. Also memorable is Aaron Gwyn‘s “Drive” in which a couple just hanging on together substitute the rush of adrenaline from near death experiences for a failing relationship, and Rick Bass’s tall-tale-like “Fish Story,” in which a boy is responsible for hydrating a fish that won’t die.
Lots of good stories in this collection, as always. Go pick one up.
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