Efforts to thwart this have given us a windfall: three of Berriault's (previously out of print) books are being republished as "Three Short Novels," under a single, lovely cover, by Berkeley's audacious Counterpoint Press. Private, circumspect, admired up and down the literary food chain (hailed by Ozick as "an inspired heir to Chekhov"), Berriault seemed to miss the wider, more commercial recognition conferred on splashier names. [...] the awards did come: four O. Henry Award prizes , the Aga Kahn Prize for fiction, National Endowment for the Arts and Guggenheim grants, a Commonwealth Club Gold Medal and others. "The Son," first published in the 1960s, is an exploration of a (post-war) era when so few choices for meaningful life existed for women that (heterosexual) sex, and sexual desirability, offered nearly the only currency. In "The Lights of Earth," Ilona, a self-effacing writer whose lover, Martin, has catapulted to fame after his novel becomes a notorious movie, attends a dinner party thrown by an influential couple "because the couple's curiosity about ... her lover stirred her own curiosity about something she wanted not to think about at all - a premonition of loss.""Conference of Victims" enacts the repercussions, upon his family and lover, of a promising political candidate's suicide.
Reported by SFGate 3 hours ago.
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