The final selection, Do Something by Kate Walbert finishes up one of the best BASS anthologies I’ve read. Not a head-scratcher among them and so I get the feeling that Stephen King and I may share some similar taste in reading contemporary fiction. I felt as satisfied with this issue as I had with Michael Chabon’s editorship of BASS 2005.
Do Something is extremely well written and has an excellent sense of voice and tone that complements the topic of a middle-aged woman standing up for something she believes in doing, risking not only her own reputation and incarceration but the embarrassment of her grown daughter and husband by her actions. It brings her face to face with herself and with things in her life and the way she has handled them, such as the death of her grown son by cancer.There is great depth of character here in the fine literary tradition, without sacrificing story and movement of story.
It was indeed a pleasure to read this compilation, and while I haven’t read Stephen King lately (after his first twenty or so novels), I remember why I liked his style.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology