New Stories from the South: The Year's Best

This is the first installment of this well-respected series that I have read - and I'm impressed. It's definitely a feast - so I won't apologize for the `title' above. I won't try to tell you that I absolutely loved everything in this book - but I found several that blew me away, and I've added a few authors to my `seek further' list as a result.I've been a huge fan of William Gay ever since I first read any of his work - and his story `Charting the territories of the red' in this volume is no disappointment. I'll pick up anything I see by him without question. New discoveries (and I'm speaking for myself here...) in this volume include Romulus Linney (his story `Tennessee' here is simply amazing); Dwight Allen (who contributes `End of the steam age'; Aaron Gwyn, a promising young talent (`Of falling'); and the incredible `Rat spoon' by Dulane Upshaw Ponder. Also notable is R. T. Smith's `I have lost my right'; the dark `Beneath the deep, slow motion' by Brad Barkley; Bill Roorbach's touching `Big Bend'; and another very dark tale, `The bone divers', by David Koon.The other stories here are all well written - these are simply the ones that touched me most deeply. Some of them are so good they made my mouth drop open from time to time. I'll definitely be checking out some of the other volumes in this series, as well as some of the works by the authors I mentioned above - some of them have novels or collections forthcoming.

I've read every Stories from the South collection published (since 1986). Each year there are famous contributors. 2002 includes a first-rate piece by Romulus Linney "Tennessee" and Doris Betts continues giving readers her literary gems with "Aboveground." And there are those who have not won as much critical attention. Up-and-coming George Singleton's "Show-and-Tell" was one of the funniest pieces in the collection, and Aaron Gwyn's "Of Falling" was probably one of the most powerful. The contributions by David Koon, Dwight Allen, and Julie Orringer also desrve mention for their technical and thematic brilliance. This collection has pieces to tug the heartstrings in every direction.Four stars because, like usual, this collection delivers wonderful and varied pieces; however, I took a star off (please note it was only one star) because there were a few sub-par pieces. Kate Small's "Maximum Sunlight" seemed only tangentially "from the South" as it was set in Washington, DC; moreover, it was overtly politcal at the cost of artistic merit, crying "Im southern too" too loudly. Bill Roorbach's "Big Bend" was a geographically interesting setting but poorly executed; the voice felt inauthentic, especially the hackneyed, non-native way he deployed "y'all." Similarly, Lucia Nevai's "Faith Healer" dragged through stereotypes until some racist Yankees found closure.