HOW FAR SHE WENT by Mary...

HOW FAR SHE WENT by Mary Hood (University of Georgia Press: $9.95; 123 pp . ). Hood won both the Flannery O’Connor Award and the Southern Review/Louisiana State University Short Fiction Award for this anthology of stories set in the rural South. Her stories focus on the petty tragedies of everyday people who fail to learn from their mistakes: The heroine of “Hindsight” lives her life in reverse, learning what she wants only after it has passed her by. A portrait of a failed marriage, “Solomon’s Seal” showcases Hood’s ability to portray her characters in a few well-chosen phrases: “She decided after a time to give as good as she got, which wasn’t much. The scarcity of it, and her continuous mental bookkeeping, set her face in a mask and left her lips narrowed.”