Critics’ Choice

The National Book Critics Circle awarded its 1994 fiction prize last Sunday to Carol Shields’ “The Stone Diaries,” which Times reviewer Elizabeth Benedict called a “luminous, wonderfully ambitious” portrait of an octogenarian. The winner for general nonfiction was Lynn H. Nicholas’ “The Rape of Europa,” which Times critic Olivier Bernier called “a fascinating, admirably documented” account of how the Third Reich looted Europe’s treasures. The biography award went to Mikal Gilmore for “Shot in the Heart,” which also won a 1994 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for what judge Tom Clark called its “haunting and arresting family history” (Gilmore is the brother of Gary Gilmore, who was executed for murder in 1977 by a Utah firing squad). The organization’s poetry prize went to Mark Rudman for “Rider,” a meditation on family connections, while Gerald Early won its criticism prize for his essay collection, “The Culture of Bruising.”