{"id":25185,"date":"2019-01-09T19:00:56","date_gmt":"2019-01-09T23:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=25185"},"modified":"2019-01-09T19:00:56","modified_gmt":"2019-01-09T23:00:56","slug":"the-story-prize-finalists-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2019\/01\/09\/the-story-prize-finalists-5\/","title":{"rendered":"The Story Prize Finalists"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"\"<\/p>\n

The Story Prize is celebrating its 15th year! Congrats to them, and congrats to the three finalists for this year’s prize, announced this morning. They were selected from 108 submissions! The winner will be announced on March 6.<\/p>\n

I’ve read some of the stories in these collections, and I think they are solid. Because I have always been a fan of Eisenberg, I’ll lean toward wanting her to win, but really I’m just happy this prize exists to shine some deserved light on story collections.<\/p>\n

Here are the three finalists.<\/p>\n

\"\"A Lucky Man<\/span><\/strong><\/em>
\nby Jamel Brinkley<\/span>
\nGraywolf Press<\/span><\/p>\n

Purchase the book on Amazon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the nine expansive, searching stories of\u00a0A Lucky Man<\/i>, fathers and sons attempt to salvage relationships with friends and family members and confront mistakes made in the past. An imaginative young boy from the Bronx goes swimming with his group from day camp at a backyard pool in the suburbs, and faces the effects of power and privilege in ways he can barely grasp. A teen intent on proving himself a man through the all-night revel of J\u2019Ouvert can\u2019t help but look out for his impressionable younger brother. A pair of college boys on the prowl follow two girls home from a party and have to own the uncomfortable truth of their desires. And at a capoeira conference, two brothers grapple with how to tell the story of their family, caught in the dance of their painful, fractured history.<\/p>\n

Jamel Brinkley\u2019s stories, in a debut that announces the arrival of a significant new voice, reflect the tenderness and vulnerability of black men and boys whose hopes sometimes betray them, especially in a world shaped by race, gender, and class?where luck may be the greatest fiction of all.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"Your Duck Is My Duck<\/span><\/strong><\/em>
\nby Deborah Eisenberg<\/span>
\nEcco<\/span><\/p>\n

Purchase the book on Amazon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At times raucously hilarious, at times charming and delightful, at times as solemn and mysterious as a pond at midnight, Deborah Eisenberg\u2019s stories gently compel us to confront the most disturbing truths about ourselves\u2014from our intimate lives as lovers, parents, and children, to our equally troubling roles as citizens on a violent, terrifying planet.<\/p>\n

Each of the six stories in\u00a0Your Duck is My Duck<\/em>, her first collection since 2006, has the heft and complexity of a novel. With her own inexorable but utterly unpredictable logic and her almost uncanny ability to conjure the strange states of mind and emotion that constitute our daily consciousness, Eisenberg pulls us as if by gossamer threads through her characters\u2014a tormented woman whose face determines her destiny; a group of film actors shocked to read a book about their past; a privileged young man who unexpectedly falls into a love affair with a human rights worker caught up in an all-consuming quest that he doesn’t understand.<\/p>\n

In Eisenberg\u2019s world, the forces of money, sex, and power cannot be escaped, and the force of history, whether confronted or denied, cannot be evaded. No one writes better about time, tragedy and grief, and the indifferent but beautiful universe around us.<\/p>\n

\n

\"LaurenFlorida<\/span><\/strong><\/em>
\nby Lauren Groff<\/span>
\nRiverhead Books<\/span><\/p>\n

Purchase the book on Amazon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In her thrilling new book, Lauren Groff brings\u00a0the reader into a physical world that is at once domestic and wild\u2014a place where the hazards of the natural world lie waiting to pounce, yet the greatest threats and mysteries are still of an emotional, psychological nature. A family retreat can be derailed by a prowling panther, or by a sexual secret. Among those navigating this place are a resourceful pair of abandoned sisters; a lonely boy, grown up; a restless, childless couple, a searching, homeless woman; and an unforgettable, recurring character\u2014a steely and conflicted wife and mother.<\/p>\n

The stories in this collection span characters, towns, decades, even centuries, but Florida\u2014its landscape, climate, history, and state of mind\u2014becomes its gravitational center: an energy, a mood, as much as a place of residence. Groff transports the reader, then jolts us alert with a crackle of wit, a wave of sadness, a flash of cruelty, as she writes about loneliness, rage, family, and the passage of time. With shocking accuracy and effect, she pinpoints the moments and decisions and connections behind human pleasure and pain, hope and despair, love and fury\u2014the moments that make us alive. Startling, precise, and affecting,\u00a0Florida<\/i>\u00a0is a magnificent achievement.<\/p>\n

[\/fusion_text][fusion_text columns=”” column_min_width=”” column_spacing=”” rule_style=”default” rule_size=”” rule_color=”” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” class=”” id=””]<\/p>\n

Past winners of The Story Prize<\/strong><\/p>\n

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2005:<\/span>\u00a0The Dew Breaker<\/em>, by Edwidge Danticat
\n2006:<\/span>\u00a0The Hill Road<\/em>, by Patrick O’Keefe
\n2007<\/span>:\u00a0The Stories of Mary Gordon<\/em>, by Mary Gordon
\n2008:<\/span>\u00a0Like You’d Understand, Anyway<\/em>, by Jim Shephard
\n2009:<\/span>\u00a0Our Story Begins<\/em>, by Tobias Wolff
\n2010:<\/span>\u00a0In Other Rooms, Other Wonders<\/em>, by Daniyal Mueenuddin
\n2011:<\/span>\u00a0Memory Wall<\/em>, by Anthony Doerr<\/p>\n

[\/fusion_text][\/fusion_builder_column_inner][fusion_builder_column_inner type=”1_2″ layout=”1_2″ spacing=”” center_content=”no” hover_type=”none” link=”” min_height=”” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” class=”” id=”” background_color=”” background_image=”” background_position=”left top” background_repeat=”no-repeat” border_size=”0″ border_color=”” border_style=”solid” padding_top=”” padding_right=”” padding_bottom=”” padding_left=”” dimension_margin=”” animation_type=”” animation_direction=”left” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_offset=”” last=”no” border_position=”all” element_content=””][fusion_text columns=”” column_min_width=”” column_spacing=”” rule_style=”default” rule_size=”” rule_color=”” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” class=”” id=””]<\/p>\n

2012:<\/span>\u00a0We Others: New & Selected Stories<\/em>, by Steven Millhauser
\n2013:<\/span>\u00a0Battleborn<\/em>, by Claire Vaye Watkins
\n2014:<\/span>\u00a0Tenth of December<\/em>, by George Saunders
\n2015:<\/span> Thunderstruck<\/em>, by Elizabeth McCracken
\n2016:<\/span>\u00a0Fortune Smiles<\/em>, by Adam Johnson
\n2017:<\/span>\u00a0For a Little While<\/em>, by Rick Bass
\n2018:<\/span>\u00a0Anything Is Possible<\/em>, by Elizabeth Strout<\/p>\n

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This morning the three finalists for The Story Prize were announced. Come see what they 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