The Collected Stories of Reynolds Price

This enormous collection of short stories contains 50 stories written over a span of almost 40 years.  Because the collection is so lengthy, diverse, and spans the two ends of Price's writing career, it is nearly impossible to summarize them in just a few sentences.  I found a few of the stories to be very compelling, several to be quite good, and about half of them I felt little to no engagement with, and because these were the majority of the stories, I have quite mixed views about this collection as a whole.

Price's stories appear to be at least partially autobiographical, and touch on a few recurring themes.  Many of the stories are about the coming-of-age of a 12-year-old boy - his first experiences in responsibility, sexual awakening, and understanding what it is to be a man (see, for example, "The Enormous Door").  Other stories are about the friendships and other relationships that develop between adult men ("A Final Account").  Several of the stories contain supernatural elements with ghosts, angels, and other spectres advancing the story.  And many stories are about the loss of a partner, infidelity for sure, as in "Serious Need," or another I enjoyed, "Truth and Lies," about a woman who confronts her husband's mistress and learns something unexpected.  But there are also a few about the suicide of a wife and its impact on the living husband - with a focus on the male perspective that I found frustrating (see, for example, "Good and Bad Dreams" and "Walking Lessons").

For me, the most authentic stories were about the relationship between black and white characters in Price's native North Carolina in the immediate post-civil war generations.  Probably my favorite story in the collection was "The Anniversary," which, unusually for Price, was narrated by a woman.  On the anniversary of the death of Pretty Billy, her fiance who tragically died the day before their wedding, Miss Lillian Belle, an old maid, narrates the story of their courtship, wedding planning, and his death to a young black boy, a neighbor.  Her memories are poignant and compelling, and leave room to imagine a greater scandal that Miss Lillian Belle either intentionally omits or is actually innocent of - and the mystery rounds the story out perfectly.

A second favorite was "Uncle Grant,"  about the long friendship between the Price family and an elderly black man.  Uncle Grant's character was vivid and complex, and the tensions between the white middle class Prices and the former slave really resonated with me (also read "Bess Waters" for a similarly compelling story).  I suspect it is this kind of writing, and the American Southern voice, that flagged this collection to the Pulitzer committee.