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Review by George Cowmeadow Bauman
Imagine buying a book of 18 enjoyable short stories written by writers who have donated their work to the benefit of an anti-hunger organization and published by a firm donating the profits to the same effort.
Imagine no more. Writers Harvest 2 is just such a book of fictional imaginations. For 10 years Share Our Strength has helped millions of Americans; the quality of writing in this second collection should expand its influence a little more. Short stories are like voyeuristic glimpses into other people's lives. One story is about just such voyeuristic curiosity: in David Haynes's "Women Like Those," the characters eavesdrop into the troubled lives of women at a laundromat. "Who knows what becomes of women like those in places like that? He only knows that he and Julie see all kinds of people all the time, and he knows that a lot of those people are looking right back at them and making up stories just like theirs, or worse."
One of the stories is called "Glorious Mysteries," but all the stories are about the mysteries of living which, even if painful, become transformed and glorious because they are recognizable, lyrical, given with the telling detail. Michael Chabon describes a marriage that was content "for the length of a baseball season," and Jill McCorkle tells about a Virgin Island hospital where a character sees "a hall where pregnant women perched like hood ornaments on cheap aluminum stretchers."
The themes of these stories are mortality, generation, connections and missed opportunities, illusions, and fears of abandonment. It is a highly satisfying collection, instantly engaging, and very readable.
©1996, ProMotion, inc.