A review by rocketiza
The Pen/O. Henry Prize Stories 2012 by Daniyal Mueenuddin, Ron Rash, Laura Furman, Mary Gaitskill

2.0

About 16/20 stories here are well written but so devoid of a voice or emotion they could have been by the same person despite the contributor being of very different races, religions and sexes.The editors seemed to greatly admire form over style, and despise imagination. Thankfully, a couple late entries that felt completely out of place from the rest of the works came the rescue from a one star review in the end, but I am no longer taking the PEN/O. Henry Prize as a positive endorsement of literature after reading this.