One Day in the Short, Happy Life of Anna Banana, and Other Maine Stories

Fahy ( Greengroundtown , etc. ) is the winner of the 1987 Maine Arts Commission Fiction Competition, judged by Mary McCarthy. Though rough-hewn and underdeveloped, his stories convey distinctive characters and a Maine milieu (the area is actually the most poignant protagonist). The tales turn on a conflict between outsiders and natives, but the title story contains an usual twist. ``Anna Banana,'' as she is derisively called by her grandchildren, is an obnoxious but pathetic, aging widow who intrudes on her daughter's family who have settled in Maine. Her cruel but truthful and recognizable fate is meant to disconcert readers. The collection's other three pieces depict an unbridled modern world impinging on a poor, backward and inhospitable, but beautifully wild and natural, state. Fahy's best work is ``The Glow of Copper.'' The title refers to the shiny new roof that a pair of thoughtless and acquisitive ``summer people'' have put on an old farmhouse previously owned by 68-year-old Hattie Slocum, who, impoverished, toothless and chain-smoking, and speaking and thinking here in a delightful regional patois, seeks to avenge the gentrification, which has destroyed apple trees and a blueberry field as it mocks her way of life. (July)