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The finalists for The Story Prize for books published in 2016 have been announced! This is a wonderful prize, and it’s always so exciting to see what they choose to honor. This year, I haven’t read a single story from any of the authors, so there’s some work to be done!
For a Little While, by Rick Bass
Goodnight, Beautiful Women, by Anna Noyes
They Were Like Family to Me, by Helen Maryles Shankman
If you’ve read any, please let me know your thoughts!
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I’ve read Helen Maryles Shankman’s collection (under its original title of ‘In the Land of Armadillos’) and, despite my not being a massive fan of magical realism, I liked it a lot. Occasionally the stories got a bit repetitive but overall they were powerful and memorable. I have a copy of the Anna Noyes so I shall get to that soon. Rick Bass’s book I find to be an odd inclusion – I’ve never read him, though I do have a couple of his books, but ‘For a Little While’ includes seven of the ten stories from his ‘The Lives of Rocks’ which was a Story Prize finalist in 2007, so this seems like getting a second bite of the cherry to some extent.
Personally I was hoping to see Patrick Ryan’s ‘The Dream Life of Astronauts’ or Michelle Latiolais’s “She” among the finalists – two of my favourite collections from last year.
Thanks for this, Trevor. I plan to read in all three collections, which are now on my bed side table. Oddly, Noyes’ “Goodnight, Beautiful Women” is the third collection of short stories set primarily in Maine published in the last two years: the estimable Ann Beattie’s “The State We’re In” (2015), and Sara Majka’s impressive debut “Cities I’ve Never Lived In.” Like David, I was disappointed that Ryan’s “The Dream Life of Astronauts” was not included.
I just finished Noyes’ “Good Night, Beautiful Women,” which overall I thought was excellent. I especially recommend the final four stories: “Werewolf,” “This is who she was,” “Changeling,” and “Homecoming.”