cover image Other Sides of Silence: New Fiction from Ploughshares

Other Sides of Silence: New Fiction from Ploughshares

. Faber & Faber, $12.95 (297pp) ISBN 978-0-571-19811-5

This anthology of short fiction published in Ploughshares since 1984 doesn't always show off a writer's best efforts (Rick Bass, for example, disappoints with a lackluster tale of a young couple that sets up house in a Mississippi ghost town, where an old woman descended from slaves waits for a boyfriend who's been gone for 40 years). Moreover, some of Ploughshares editor Henry's choices are well crafted but far too short to generate enough heat (Sue Miller's story of an eighth grader, the daughter of white liberals, who is harassed by a black classmate) and one piece, Phillip Lopate's finely argued case against joie de vivre, is a personal essay, not fiction. Still, many of these judiciously chosen offerings demonstrate the literary magazine's viability as an organ of vibrant voices. Highlights include Andre Dubus's harrowing portrait of a woman whose husband abused their children; Wayne Johnson's tale of a Native American ballplayer who fuels his pitching with his hatred of whites; and Carol Roh-Spaulding's depiction of a Korean teenager in 1945 Northern California who lives in dread of the husband her old-fashioned parents may foist upon her. (May)