This omnibus edition from the Library of America collects the four novels written by Zora Neale Hurston, most known for Their Eyes Were Watching God, and nine of her short stories. I’ve reviewed the novels separately already, but a word for this omnibus. The novels are variable. Of the four, two, Their Eyes Were Watching God & Seraph on the Suwanee, are genuinely great novels. Jonah’s Gourd Vine is solid, if uncertain at times and Moses, Man of the Mountain is downright bad. Her short stories have a similarly uneven quality. Of the eight or nine here, there are two or three downright masterpieces; the best is probably Drenched in Light, a story about a young girl who refuses to let her bad circumstances keep her down. It’s taken up with something Hurston rarely wrote about: joy and happiness. The other really great one is Spunk, a grim little tale about a sociopathic bully who finds out that what goes around comes around in a really gruesome way. Some of the others are good and there are a couple of really awful ones, like Book of Harlem which attempts to tell a simple story in a kind of mock Biblical style and Story in Harlem Slang, which is basically a technical exercise to see how much vernacular she can squeeze into one story. Still, Hurston is an author that it’s worth doing a deep dive on. Reading the bulk of her fiction here in chronological order was a great experience all around, even with Moses stuck in the middle there. She’s an ever-changing author; none of her novels are really like any of the others and that means that she’s well suited for an omnibus treatment if you want a whole picture. 3 ½ stars.
tl;dr – omnibus collects Hurston’s four novels and a handful of short stories; the texts range from brilliant to pretty bad, but Hurston is fun to view in a well-rounded way. 3 ½ stars.