Richard Ford is as fine a judge of good fiction as he is a practitioner. In 1992 he edited The Granta Book of the American Short Story. Its quality is well matched by the 11 works chosen here, juxtaposing his fellow Southerners Eudora Welty, William Styron, Peter Taylor and Barry Hannah with, among others, Jewish Easterners such as Philip Roth and Cynthia Ozick. With the inclusion of Joyce Carol Oates's mesmeric, near perfect drama, "I Lock the Door Upon Myself", he succeeds in alerting readers not only to the best work by a writer who has too often paid dearly for her overly prolific output and relentless intensity, but to a truly inspired prose work. Making ordinary life the stuff of art without appearing to be art is Jane Smiley's gift. In "The Age of Grief" a plain, candidly observed narrative, a successful dentist terrified of losing his wife, also a dentist, to another man, carries on with the domestic rituals while reporting her moods and his increasing fear. Peter Taylor's "The Old Forest" is a characteristically thoughtful study. It also confirms that in the late Taylor, as with William Maxwell, the voice of Henry James does endure. Roth's debut, "Goodbye, Columbus", remains as urgent as ever. Even without Bellow, Updike, Maxwell and Annie Proulx's magnificent "Brokeback Mountain", this is a valuable book honouring a rich tradition.
