PULITZER PRIZES of the 1990s

The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love
Oscar Hijuelos

1990 Winner

"It's 1949. It's the era of the mambo, and two young Cuban musicians make their way up from Havana to the grand stage of New York. The Castillo brothers, workers by day, become by night stars of the dance halls, where their orchestra plays the lush, sensuous, pulsing music that earns them the title of the Mambo Kings. This is their moment of youth--a golden time that thirty years later will be remembered with nostalgia and deep afection. In The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love,Oscar Hijuelos has created a rich and enthralling novel about passion and loss, memory and desire. "

Rabbit at Rest
John Updike

1991 Winner

In John Updike's fourth and final novel about ex-basketball player Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, the hero has acquired heart trouble, a Florida condo, and a second grandchild. His son, Nelson, is behaving erratically; his daughter-in-law, Pru, is sending out mixed signals; and his wife, Janice, decides in mid-life to become a working girl. As, though the winter, spring, and summer of 1989, Reagan's debt-ridden, AIDS-plagued America yields to that of George Bush, Rabbit explores the bleak terrain of late middle age, looking for reasons to live. Death always hovers about the Rabbit books; we know from its opening sentence that Rabbit will die in this one. In what may be the most affecting scene Updike has ever written, Rabbit suffers a heart attack as he tries to rescuehis granddaughter in a boating accident. . . . Like Rabbit, this novel would have profited by losing weight. From its start, Updike strikes a valedictory tone, taking space to trot out old characters, even old buildings, from Rabbit's past. Clearly this can't go on; Updike knows it. At the end, just as we knew he would, he writes Rabbit off. It's been a grand trip, and this finale is one of Updike's best books.

A THOUSAND ACRES
Jane Smiley 

1992 Winner

Aging Larry Cook announces his intention to turn over his 1,000-acre farm--one of the largest in Zebulon County, Iowa--to his three daughters, Caroline, Ginny and Rose. A man of harsh sensibilities, he carves Caroline out of the deal because she has the nerve to be less than enthusiastic about her father's generosity. While Larry Cook deteriorates into a pathetic drunk, his daughters are left to cope with the often grim realities of life on a family farm--from battering husbands to cutthroat lenders.Smiley's novel, King Lear with a shocking twist, portrays the enduring violence of incest to body and spirit. The narrative voice describes her family--a wealthy farmer and his three daughters. Family relationships are explored, especially the hidden roots that shape and define behaviors and conflicts, some lasting a lifetime.  The disclosure of a horribly dark secret explains the personalities of the three daughters and, for two, their metaphoric afflictions (infertility and breast cancer). Smiley's novel is layered with rich complexities, but none more powerful and astonishing than the core event, the sexual victimization of two vulnerable teenage girls who, as the story unfolds, are permanently scarred. Through a reinterpretation of Lear, Smiley demonstrates the cost of this hideous form of male domination and female victimization  

A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
Robert Olen Butler

1993 Winner

The unspoken legacy of the Vietnam War--the ordeals of the Vietnamese--is powerfully evoked in these fifteen stories, each narrated in a different voice. Old or young, humble or arrogant, puzzled or proud, these are characters for whom the absurdities of contemporary American popular culture and searing memories of war uneasily coexist.  Blending Vietnamese folklore and American realities, lyric, dreamlike passages and comic turns, Butler creates a panoramic tapestry of a people struggling to find a balance between tradition and assimilation, between their hearts and hope. 

The Shipping News
Annie Proux

1994 Winner

At thirty-six, Quoyle, a third-rate newspaperman, is wrenched violently out of his workaday life when his two-timing wife gets her just desserts. He retreats with his two daughters to his ancestral home on the starkly beautiful Newfoundland coast, where a rich cast of local characters all play a part in Quoyle's struggle to reclaim his life. As three generations of his family cobble up new lives, Quoyle confronts his private demons—and the unpredictable forces of nature and society—and begins to see the possibility of love without pain or misery.A vigorous, darkly comic, and at times magical portrait of the contemporary American family, The Shipping News shows why Annie Proulx is recognized as one of the most gifted and original writers in America today.

The Stone Diaries
Carol Shield's

1995 Winner

The Stone Diaries is the story of Daisy Stone Goodwill, a Canadian woman whose mother died in childbirth, was raised by her neighbor's relatives, was widowed twice (the first time on her honeymoon), raised children, worked in a job she loved until she was fired, moved to Florida, and died. Daisy is, in one sense, an absolutely "ordinary" woman, who lives much of her life in the shadow of men.  What came across most is Daisy's resilience in the face of very difficult circumstances, finding some satisfaction on the world's terms. Undeniably, Daisy was not a "success" as we now view women's lives. However, she formed some successful relationships, and always seemed to put the pieces together to move from one part of her life to the next. Daisy Goodwill does not lead an extraordinary life. She lives the life of most women, one of simply doing the best she can with the circumstances presented to her. The reader learns about certain key time periods in Daisy's life, and none of the time frames are examined minutely. Shields has managed to capture the essence of a life by creating a novel based on bits and pieces that would actually appear in a diary.

Independence Day
Richard Ford

1996 Winner

Independence Day by Richard Ford is a powerful and exhilarating novel. The book is a sequel to The Sportswriter. The narrator, Frank Bascombe, a former sportswriter, is divorced and lives in Haddam, New Jersey. A real estate agent, Frank is going through what he calls "the Existence Period." Meanwhile his ex-wife, Ann, has married Charley O'Dell, an architect . She is now Mrs. Charley O'Dell of 86 Swallow Lane, Deep River, CT. Both his children live there too, though as Frank says, "I'm not certain how happy they are or even should be" (7). Frank's 15-year-old son, Paul, is an emotionally troubled teenager who faces a court date for shoplifting.  The novel stresses the idea of personal independence. Both Frank and Paul try to obtain independence from the nightmares which hold them captive. Frank has gone through a son's death, a divorce, and the ruin of his sportswriting career. Similarly, Paul has to face his parents' divorce, the death of his brother, and the death of his dog, Mr. Toby. The book itself, however, is lengthy and exhausting. It is perfect for someone who has a lot of patience and time. Still, Independence Day is an astonishing novel with compelling characters.  

1997 Winner

Young Martin Dressler begins his career as an industrious helper in his father's cigar store. In the course of his restless young manhood, he makes a swift and eventful rise to the top, accompanied by two sisters--one a dreamlike shadow, the other a worldly business partner. As the eponymous Martin's vision becomes bolder and bolder he walks a haunted line between fantasy and reality, madness and ambition, art and industry, a sense of doom builds piece-by-hypnotic piece until this mesmerizing journey into the heart of an American dreamer reaches its bitter-sweet conclusion.  

American Pastoral
Philip Roth 

1998 Winner

Readers who have followed Philip Roth's hero and alter-ego Nathan Zuckerman through five previous novels will be happy to see him again in American Pastoral, a novel that finds Nathan attending a high school reunion in Newark, New Jersey. But enjoy him while you can. Nathan disappears on page 89 and the story turns toward the particulars of Seymour Levov--the Swede, to his friends--a classmate of Zuckerman's whose life, it turns out, is nothing like what Nathan had imagined for him. More precisely, American Pastoral follows the fortunes of young Merry Levov, Swede's only child. At the age of 16, Merry gets involved with the Weathermen and blows up a post office, accidentally killing a man. She goes on the run and her life becomes one of violence, destitution, and irrationality. The central question in American Pastoral is, how could this fruit fall so terribly far from the tree? How could a decent man like Swede Levov and his respectable wife have raised a creature like Merry? Is it the parents' fault, or are Merry's choices the inevitable response to a crumbling America? In Swede Levov, Philip Roth has created a modern-day Job, and the calamities that befall him are the plagues of our times.

1999 Winner

In The Hours, Michael Cunningham draws inventively on the life and work of Virginia Woolf to tell the story of a group of contemporary characters who are struggling with the conflicting claims of love and inheritance, hope and despair.  The novel opens with an evocation of Woolf's last days before her suicide in 1941, and moves to the stories of two modern American women who are trying to make rewarding lives for themselves in spite of the demands of friends, lovers, and family.   Clarissa Vaughan is a book editor who lives in present-day Greenwich Village; when we meet her, she is buying flowers to display at a party for her friend Richard, an ailing poet who has just won a major literary prize. Laura Brown is a housewife in postwar California who is bringing up her only son and looking for her true life outside of her stifling marriage.   With rare ease and assurance, Cunningham makes the two women's lives converge with Virginia Woolf's in an unexpected and heartbreaking way during the party for Richard. As the novel jump-cuts through the twentieth century, every line resonates with Cunningham's clear, strong, surprisingly lyrical contemporary voice.