Of course, I'm disappointed that none of the five finalists for the National Book Award for fiction are short story collections. There were some good ones this year, however, I don't want to tip our hand by saying what I think should have been in the mix. Still, the judges--Gail Godwin, Rebecca Goldstein, Elinor Lipman, Reginald McKnight, and Jess Walter--read 271 books, and having not read the same ones, it's hard to take issue with their choices. They deserve a lot of credit for devoting themselves to this task. My wife, Alice, was a judge in 2003, and I know what a huge, time-consuming job it is. In any event, at face value, it looks like the panel made interesting choices, and I hope this will bring more readers to what are sure to be very worthwhile books.The finalists, by the way, are:
Aleksandar Hemon, The Lazarus Project (Riverhead)
Rachel Kushner, Telex from Cuba (Scribner)
Peter Matthiessen, Shadow Country (Modern Library)
Marilynne Robinson, Home (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Salvatore Scibona, The End (Graywolf Press)
Rachel Kushner, Telex from Cuba (Scribner)
Peter Matthiessen, Shadow Country (Modern Library)
Marilynne Robinson, Home (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Salvatore Scibona, The End (Graywolf Press)