New Stories from the South 2003: The Year's Best
Now in its eighteenth year, this annual anthology continues to collect some of the best stories by writers from the South. Roy Blount's preface satirically notes that in the South, but not the North, people often act like they "don't know what to think" and that compared to the classic college football rivalry in the South between coaches Bobby Dodd and Bear Bryant, "the Harvard-Yale game is a panel discussion." Some of that edge can be glimpsed in Brad Vice's "Report from Junction," in which a drought strangles a small Texas town, and a borderline scholarship boy headed for Bear Bryant's water-starved training camp (where most eventually quit) nearly shoots a threatening oil man to release himself from the struggle and possible failure ahead. Lucy Corin's "Rich People" depicts a more comic encounter across class lines. Some other stories explore complicated family relationships, such as Dorothy Allison's "Compassion," where sisters struggle to accept (or resist) the fact of their mother's last days.James O'LaughlinCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved