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The Best American Short Stories 2013
“As our vision becomes more global, our storytelling is stretching in many ways. Stories increasingly change point of view, switch location, and sometimes pack as much material as a short novel might,” writes guest editor Elizabeth Strout. “It’s the variety of voices that most indicates the increasing confluence of cultures involved in making us who we are.” The Best American Short Stories 2013 presents an impressive diversity of writers who dexterously lead us into their corners of the world.
In “Miss Lora,” Junot Díaz masterfully puts us in the mind of a teenage boy who throws aside his better sense and pursues an intimate affair with a high school teacher. Sheila Kohler tackles innocence and abuse as a child wanders away from her mother, in thrall to a stranger she believes is the “Magic Man.” Kirstin Valdez Quade’s “Nemecia” depicts the after-effects of a secret, violent family trauma. Joan Wickersham’s “The Tunnel” is a tragic love story about a mother’s declining health and her daughter’s helplessness as she struggles to balance her responsibility to her mother and her own desires. New author Callan Wink’s “Breatharians” unsettles the reader as a farm boy shoulders a grim chore in the wake of his parents’ estrangement.
“Elizabeth Strout was a wonderful reader, an author who knows well that the sound of one’s writing is just as important as and indivisible from the content,” writes series editor Heidi Pitlor. “Here are twenty compellingly told, powerfully felt stories about urgent matters with profound consequences.”
In “Miss Lora,” Junot Díaz masterfully puts us in the mind of a teenage boy who throws aside his better sense and pursues an intimate affair with a high school teacher. Sheila Kohler tackles innocence and abuse as a child wanders away from her mother, in thrall to a stranger she believes is the “Magic Man.” Kirstin Valdez Quade’s “Nemecia” depicts the after-effects of a secret, violent family trauma. Joan Wickersham’s “The Tunnel” is a tragic love story about a mother’s declining health and her daughter’s helplessness as she struggles to balance her responsibility to her mother and her own desires. New author Callan Wink’s “Breatharians” unsettles the reader as a farm boy shoulders a grim chore in the wake of his parents’ estrangement.
“Elizabeth Strout was a wonderful reader, an author who knows well that the sound of one’s writing is just as important as and indivisible from the content,” writes series editor Heidi Pitlor. “Here are twenty compellingly told, powerfully felt stories about urgent matters with profound consequences.”
384 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2013
511 people are currently reading
1916 people want to read
About the author
Elizabeth Strout
50 books16.1k followersElizabeth Strout is the author of several novels, including: Abide with Me, a national bestseller and BookSense pick, and Amy and Isabelle, which won the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize, and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize in England. In 2009 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her book Olive Kitteridge. Her short stories have been published in a number of magazines, including The New Yorker. She teaches at the Master of Fine Arts program at Queens University of Charlotte.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 177 reviews
January 6, 2014
A lot of people I know don’t like short stories. I think they’re missing out. For me they’re like a small but intense jewel. The good ones (and let’s assume that that’s the category I’m writing about) leave you yearning for more. They often serve up a punchline that knocks you off balance. And an anthology delivers a range of voices and time/location scenarios and perspectives that I find engrossing. This series (Best American Short Stories or BASS) is my annual Christmas treat – like fruitcake and turkey – it unfolds over my summer break at the beach.
Charles May, who always writes in detail about this series reckons that “this is the best (or the best of the Best, if you will, collection of BASS stories published in many years.” I don’t agree with him; I’ve read more interesting and challenging editions of BASS in other years – but it is still a reading highlight for me.
My pick of the bunch – a stand-out story was Jim Shepard’s ‘The World to Come’ – a beautiful and moving story set in 19th century rural New England. The main character is a lonely farmer’s wife who strikes up a close relationship with the woman who lives on the next farm. Shephard says of the story (in the wonderful Contributors Notes that accompany the stories) that he’d “come across a book chronicling the worst storms in the history of New England. (That’s the kind of book I tend to read.) I was struck, going through it, by just the day-to-day arduousness and loneliness of the farmers’ lives. That led me to other histories and journals and diaries, and I came across a farmer’s one-line notation about how sad his wife was, because her one friend had moved away.” I’ll look for more of his writing this year.
There’s a good story by Alice Munro (as Charles May says “Not one of Munro’s best stories. But her less-than-best is better than most”) and a good story by George Saunders. I liked “Nemecia” by Kirsten Valdez Quade and The Third Dumpster by Gish Jen too. I could go on. Looking at reviews, I found this essay by Steven Millhauser whose story ‘A Voice in the Night’ is one of the stories in BASS. The essay is titled “The Ambition of the Short Story”. This is a quote from the essay: “The short story concentrates on its grain of sand, in the fierce belief that there — right there, in the palm of its hand — lies the universe. It seeks to know that grain of sand the way a lover seeks to know the face of the beloved. It looks for the moment when the grain of sand reveals its true nature. In that moment of mystic expansion, when the macrocosmic flower bursts from the microcosmic seed, the short story feels its power. It becomes bigger than itself. It becomes bigger than the novel. It becomes as big as the universe. Therein lies the immodesty of the short story, its secret aggression. Its method is revelation. Its littleness is the agency of its power.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/boo...)
“Its littleness is the agency of its power” – I love that quote. I know that the remnants of some of these stories will linger with me for years, especially the Shephard one.
Charles May, who always writes in detail about this series reckons that “this is the best (or the best of the Best, if you will, collection of BASS stories published in many years.” I don’t agree with him; I’ve read more interesting and challenging editions of BASS in other years – but it is still a reading highlight for me.
My pick of the bunch – a stand-out story was Jim Shepard’s ‘The World to Come’ – a beautiful and moving story set in 19th century rural New England. The main character is a lonely farmer’s wife who strikes up a close relationship with the woman who lives on the next farm. Shephard says of the story (in the wonderful Contributors Notes that accompany the stories) that he’d “come across a book chronicling the worst storms in the history of New England. (That’s the kind of book I tend to read.) I was struck, going through it, by just the day-to-day arduousness and loneliness of the farmers’ lives. That led me to other histories and journals and diaries, and I came across a farmer’s one-line notation about how sad his wife was, because her one friend had moved away.” I’ll look for more of his writing this year.
There’s a good story by Alice Munro (as Charles May says “Not one of Munro’s best stories. But her less-than-best is better than most”) and a good story by George Saunders. I liked “Nemecia” by Kirsten Valdez Quade and The Third Dumpster by Gish Jen too. I could go on. Looking at reviews, I found this essay by Steven Millhauser whose story ‘A Voice in the Night’ is one of the stories in BASS. The essay is titled “The Ambition of the Short Story”. This is a quote from the essay: “The short story concentrates on its grain of sand, in the fierce belief that there — right there, in the palm of its hand — lies the universe. It seeks to know that grain of sand the way a lover seeks to know the face of the beloved. It looks for the moment when the grain of sand reveals its true nature. In that moment of mystic expansion, when the macrocosmic flower bursts from the microcosmic seed, the short story feels its power. It becomes bigger than itself. It becomes bigger than the novel. It becomes as big as the universe. Therein lies the immodesty of the short story, its secret aggression. Its method is revelation. Its littleness is the agency of its power.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/boo...)
“Its littleness is the agency of its power” – I love that quote. I know that the remnants of some of these stories will linger with me for years, especially the Shephard one.
October 1, 2021
Time for another S.S. collection. One night per story...
1 - The Provincials - Daniel Alarcon
2 - Bravery - Charles Baxter
3 - Malaria - Michael Byers
- the first three are very much "mood pieces" with the emphasis on sharp prose. Not much going on so ... Meh.
4 - Miss Lora - Junot Diaz - This author writes skillfully, but he makes it seem like Dominican people are immature and obsessed with sex.
5 - Horned Men - Karl Taro Greenfield - Ahhhh ... a bit of mystery, but in line with the psychic "moodiness" of the first three stories.
6 - The Third Dumpster by Gish Gen - short and skilful; wry and chuckle-worthy.
7 - Encounters with Unexpected Animals - Bret Anthony Johnston - more mood/no plot - I think I really didn't "get" this one.
8 - Magic Man - Sheila Kohler - very unpleasant, as is often the case in stories about clueless, self-absorbed adults and the harm they cause. But then, clueless and self-absorbed is sort of the "modern condition" isn't it? Reminds of the long story "The Womanizer" by Richard Ford.
9 - The Chair - David Means - more mood. A restless stay-at-home father dwells inside his own head WAY too much. Pretty much the entire story takes place there.
10 - A Voice in the Night - Steven Millhauser - Read and recognized from reading before in The New Yorker. More mood, but I was not enlightened.
11 - Referential - Lorrie Moore - Another one from The New Yorker but I don't remember it, though I assume that I read it. The old memory ain't what it used to be. More relationship (i.e. people) troubles ... more mood.
12 - Train - Alice Munro - NOT from The New Yorker, instead from The Atlantic. I've read plenty of Alice Munro, who is right up there on my favorite author list. This one's a mini-novel in about 28 pages. Munro does that sort of thing very well. Only two characters to speak of. A broken, solitary man and a solitary, lonely woman. Reading about the sex abuse stuff made me queasy, as I have my own history in that department. Munro is SO SMART and capable when it comes to human dysfunction and survival and emotional suffering. She's like a biologist with a microscope. She employs an abrupt, almost harsh prose style that helps define the inner life of the self-protecting protagonist.
- The Ile de France ocean liner(and WWII troop ship) is mentioned. I think my scholar brother sailed off to France from Manhattan on that ship back in the 1950's.
13 - Chapter Two - Antonya Nelson - From The New Yorker, but I don't remember it. Because I'm a 12-stepper(Alanon, AA, OA) this is my least favorite story so far. The idea of someone in multiple meetings "dumping" someone else's story other than her own strains credulity. She would have been "corrected" pretty quickly by the veterans. Still, the neat twist at the end kind of makes up for all that. So far as I know I've never encountered a steady liar in meetings(well ... MAYBE once or twice), and I've been going since 1996. Teenagers generally go to Alateen meetings, not adult Alanon meetings.
14 - Nemecia - Kirsten Valdez Quade - A solid Hispanic sing-song-y flavored tale from rural New Mexico. More mood ...
15 - Philanthropy - Suzanne Rivecca - This one's a strong entry, a real attention getter. I had my own time with alcohol and drug use/abuse, but the world portrayed here is on a whole other level of catastrophic.
16 - The Semplica-Girl Diaries - George Saunders - So ... what's a "Semplica-Girl" you might ask(I did)? First of all, our diarist/narrator call's them "SGs" and one wonders, knowing George Saunders, what manner of futuristic whimsical hideousness will be sprung upon us. Soon enough, there it is. Sigh ... Mr. S is NOT a fan of our capitalist-consumerist culture. I think by now I've gotten that much from reading plenty of his stories. He's one of a kind, though Kurt Vonnegut does come to mind. Cordwainer Smith too. The underlying emotional/spiritual tone of Saunders-world is one of defeatism and melancholy. A great writer ...
- A recent(9-2021) New Yorker featured another one of his dystopic gems.
- The sad sack struggles of Saunders characters('specially the look-on-the-bright-side-diarist) reminded me last night of "The Tracks of My Tears" ...
"So take a good look at my face,
You'll see a smile that looks out of place.
If you look closer, it's easy to trace
The tracks of my tears."
17 - The World to Come - Jim Shepard - A grim tale of rural stress in farmstead relationships in mid 19th century New York. Straightforward, well executed polar opposite of a laff riot.
- I have two books by this author on my "to-read" list.
18 - The Wilderness - Elizabeth Tallent - Didn't really like this one much. A very intense and VERBAL non-story that reads like a super-interior "how and what I feel" essay by someone who thinks WAY too much. Save it sister. Has something to do with literature and reading.
19 - The Tunnel, or The News From Spain - Joan Wickersham - Read a few days ago. Relationship stuff, sex stuff, "love"(obsession) stuff, more mood.
20 - Breatharians - Callan Wine - Read before in the New Yorker, but remembered mainly for the title. When I was living in in Boulder some Breatharian dud came to town and a local paper did a write up. This is the story of an unfortunate adolescent lad with two a-holes for parents. Mom reminded me of a female co-worker(married) from years ago. REALLY attractive but annoyingly fey.
1 - The Provincials - Daniel Alarcon
2 - Bravery - Charles Baxter
3 - Malaria - Michael Byers
- the first three are very much "mood pieces" with the emphasis on sharp prose. Not much going on so ... Meh.
4 - Miss Lora - Junot Diaz - This author writes skillfully, but he makes it seem like Dominican people are immature and obsessed with sex.
5 - Horned Men - Karl Taro Greenfield - Ahhhh ... a bit of mystery, but in line with the psychic "moodiness" of the first three stories.
6 - The Third Dumpster by Gish Gen - short and skilful; wry and chuckle-worthy.
7 - Encounters with Unexpected Animals - Bret Anthony Johnston - more mood/no plot - I think I really didn't "get" this one.
8 - Magic Man - Sheila Kohler - very unpleasant, as is often the case in stories about clueless, self-absorbed adults and the harm they cause. But then, clueless and self-absorbed is sort of the "modern condition" isn't it? Reminds of the long story "The Womanizer" by Richard Ford.
9 - The Chair - David Means - more mood. A restless stay-at-home father dwells inside his own head WAY too much. Pretty much the entire story takes place there.
10 - A Voice in the Night - Steven Millhauser - Read and recognized from reading before in The New Yorker. More mood, but I was not enlightened.
11 - Referential - Lorrie Moore - Another one from The New Yorker but I don't remember it, though I assume that I read it. The old memory ain't what it used to be. More relationship (i.e. people) troubles ... more mood.
12 - Train - Alice Munro - NOT from The New Yorker, instead from The Atlantic. I've read plenty of Alice Munro, who is right up there on my favorite author list. This one's a mini-novel in about 28 pages. Munro does that sort of thing very well. Only two characters to speak of. A broken, solitary man and a solitary, lonely woman. Reading about the sex abuse stuff made me queasy, as I have my own history in that department. Munro is SO SMART and capable when it comes to human dysfunction and survival and emotional suffering. She's like a biologist with a microscope. She employs an abrupt, almost harsh prose style that helps define the inner life of the self-protecting protagonist.
- The Ile de France ocean liner(and WWII troop ship) is mentioned. I think my scholar brother sailed off to France from Manhattan on that ship back in the 1950's.
13 - Chapter Two - Antonya Nelson - From The New Yorker, but I don't remember it. Because I'm a 12-stepper(Alanon, AA, OA) this is my least favorite story so far. The idea of someone in multiple meetings "dumping" someone else's story other than her own strains credulity. She would have been "corrected" pretty quickly by the veterans. Still, the neat twist at the end kind of makes up for all that. So far as I know I've never encountered a steady liar in meetings(well ... MAYBE once or twice), and I've been going since 1996. Teenagers generally go to Alateen meetings, not adult Alanon meetings.
14 - Nemecia - Kirsten Valdez Quade - A solid Hispanic sing-song-y flavored tale from rural New Mexico. More mood ...
15 - Philanthropy - Suzanne Rivecca - This one's a strong entry, a real attention getter. I had my own time with alcohol and drug use/abuse, but the world portrayed here is on a whole other level of catastrophic.
16 - The Semplica-Girl Diaries - George Saunders - So ... what's a "Semplica-Girl" you might ask(I did)? First of all, our diarist/narrator call's them "SGs" and one wonders, knowing George Saunders, what manner of futuristic whimsical hideousness will be sprung upon us. Soon enough, there it is. Sigh ... Mr. S is NOT a fan of our capitalist-consumerist culture. I think by now I've gotten that much from reading plenty of his stories. He's one of a kind, though Kurt Vonnegut does come to mind. Cordwainer Smith too. The underlying emotional/spiritual tone of Saunders-world is one of defeatism and melancholy. A great writer ...
- A recent(9-2021) New Yorker featured another one of his dystopic gems.
- The sad sack struggles of Saunders characters('specially the look-on-the-bright-side-diarist) reminded me last night of "The Tracks of My Tears" ...
"So take a good look at my face,
You'll see a smile that looks out of place.
If you look closer, it's easy to trace
The tracks of my tears."
17 - The World to Come - Jim Shepard - A grim tale of rural stress in farmstead relationships in mid 19th century New York. Straightforward, well executed polar opposite of a laff riot.
- I have two books by this author on my "to-read" list.
18 - The Wilderness - Elizabeth Tallent - Didn't really like this one much. A very intense and VERBAL non-story that reads like a super-interior "how and what I feel" essay by someone who thinks WAY too much. Save it sister. Has something to do with literature and reading.
19 - The Tunnel, or The News From Spain - Joan Wickersham - Read a few days ago. Relationship stuff, sex stuff, "love"(obsession) stuff, more mood.
20 - Breatharians - Callan Wine - Read before in the New Yorker, but remembered mainly for the title. When I was living in in Boulder some Breatharian dud came to town and a local paper did a write up. This is the story of an unfortunate adolescent lad with two a-holes for parents. Mom reminded me of a female co-worker(married) from years ago. REALLY attractive but annoyingly fey.
March 15, 2015
Others have remarked on Strout's preference for stories which might in some ways sacrifice plot for language, and I agree with this sentiment. More than a few stories in this text I have completely forgotten by the end of reading it. However, as with all collections, there are some wonderful gems, and I'd rather spend time recommending these than badmouthing the ones I can't remember.
I particularly enjoyed Junot Diaz's "Miss Lora." It's got an interesting style (written in second-person, which we don't see often) and a lush, luscious quality to it. I also enjoyed the lack of reconciliation, and the author's refusal to give these characters anything they want.
I enjoyed "Magic Man" by Sheila Kohler, which was haunting and quietly terrifying. I specifically liked the fairy-tale feeling I got from it, and the reminder that fairy tales, though we consider them fiction for children, are often harshly violent and dark.
Kirstin Valdez Quade's "Nemecia" was also haunting and violent in a very different way. There's a certain trope in Latin American literature I've come to notice, which is the waifish, pale girl with long dark hair who is some sort of monster. Yet "Nemecia" stays grounded in reality and resolves without real resolution.
"The World to Come," by Jim Shepard, was one of several rural stories about country life, but I really enjoyed the contrast of a "simpler" time with a more modern-day concern: lesbian or bisexual women. It was heartbreaking and fascinating to see these women shoved into traditional domestic roles and controlled or destroyed by their husbands. This story was agonizing and beautiful.
Finally, the story I enjoyed the most, hands-down, was George Saunders' "The Semplica-Girl Diaries." I really don't know how to begin to express what this story made me feel. The style of it was honestly brilliant--choosing to write the story from the perspective of a downtrodden middle-aged father, from the future, who is writing in mostly-legible shorthand in his journal was an amazing decision. But it was not just how the story was told that captured me, but the story itself. There's no shortage of futuristic family stories out there. This one focuses on a struggling middle-class family looking into the faces of their richer and more successful neighbors, and dwells intensely on the father's feelings of inadequacy and guilt at failing his family. Then there's a stroke of good luck, and yet still not everything is excellent for them, as we've seen again and again in real life when good things happen to good people who have always struggled.
And yet the story isn't even close to being about all that! There is so much effort here, so much sweat, that it's difficult to believe. The narrator drops hints at the story's true purpose, and slowly that becomes the main focus rather than the struggling family plot. Instead, this story is a reflection of our own society, about standing on the necks of others to get to where we want to be. It's about exploitation and mercy, slavery and empathy and searching for morality in a society that has predetermined that morality for you. I loved this story. Saunders claims this story took him 12 years to write, and it shows, in the best of ways. You can certainly tell it was a labor of love. This story absolutely made this collection for me, and I absolutely plan on searching out more of Saunders' work.
I particularly enjoyed Junot Diaz's "Miss Lora." It's got an interesting style (written in second-person, which we don't see often) and a lush, luscious quality to it. I also enjoyed the lack of reconciliation, and the author's refusal to give these characters anything they want.
I enjoyed "Magic Man" by Sheila Kohler, which was haunting and quietly terrifying. I specifically liked the fairy-tale feeling I got from it, and the reminder that fairy tales, though we consider them fiction for children, are often harshly violent and dark.
Kirstin Valdez Quade's "Nemecia" was also haunting and violent in a very different way. There's a certain trope in Latin American literature I've come to notice, which is the waifish, pale girl with long dark hair who is some sort of monster. Yet "Nemecia" stays grounded in reality and resolves without real resolution.
"The World to Come," by Jim Shepard, was one of several rural stories about country life, but I really enjoyed the contrast of a "simpler" time with a more modern-day concern: lesbian or bisexual women. It was heartbreaking and fascinating to see these women shoved into traditional domestic roles and controlled or destroyed by their husbands. This story was agonizing and beautiful.
Finally, the story I enjoyed the most, hands-down, was George Saunders' "The Semplica-Girl Diaries." I really don't know how to begin to express what this story made me feel. The style of it was honestly brilliant--choosing to write the story from the perspective of a downtrodden middle-aged father, from the future, who is writing in mostly-legible shorthand in his journal was an amazing decision. But it was not just how the story was told that captured me, but the story itself. There's no shortage of futuristic family stories out there. This one focuses on a struggling middle-class family looking into the faces of their richer and more successful neighbors, and dwells intensely on the father's feelings of inadequacy and guilt at failing his family. Then there's a stroke of good luck, and yet still not everything is excellent for them, as we've seen again and again in real life when good things happen to good people who have always struggled.
And yet the story isn't even close to being about all that! There is so much effort here, so much sweat, that it's difficult to believe. The narrator drops hints at the story's true purpose, and slowly that becomes the main focus rather than the struggling family plot. Instead, this story is a reflection of our own society, about standing on the necks of others to get to where we want to be. It's about exploitation and mercy, slavery and empathy and searching for morality in a society that has predetermined that morality for you. I loved this story. Saunders claims this story took him 12 years to write, and it shows, in the best of ways. You can certainly tell it was a labor of love. This story absolutely made this collection for me, and I absolutely plan on searching out more of Saunders' work.
October 12, 2014
The Best American Short Stories 2013, edited by Elizabeth Strout is a collection of mostly good to very good short stories by writers familiar to me (such as Junot Díaz, Elizabeth Tallent, Joan Wickersham, and Alice Munro) as well as a group of newer ones. Many of the stories were excellent and I found only one dull.
I enjoy short stories-focused pieces of writing that I can read in one or two sittings, entering a complete world for a brief period of time. As I am in one of those life periods that does not allow for much reading time, I was grateful to these stories, so well selected by Strout.
I was particularly impressed by George Saunders' The Semplica-Girl Diaries, a tale of futuristic consumerism gone wild that does not feel all that futuristic. I loved Joan Wickersham's The Tunnel, or The News from Spain, in which an ailing, elderly mother and her daughter engage in a moving dance of fierce though ambivalent attachment. I think my personal favorite (a hard choice to make) is Jim Shepard's The World to Come, which takes place in the mid-19th century on a somewhat desolate farm in which a wife discovers the beauty of a deep connection, only to have it snatched away.
But I have too many "favorites" to list them all. If you like short stories, 2013 was apparently a good year and here's a collection filled with lovely examples.
I enjoy short stories-focused pieces of writing that I can read in one or two sittings, entering a complete world for a brief period of time. As I am in one of those life periods that does not allow for much reading time, I was grateful to these stories, so well selected by Strout.
I was particularly impressed by George Saunders' The Semplica-Girl Diaries, a tale of futuristic consumerism gone wild that does not feel all that futuristic. I loved Joan Wickersham's The Tunnel, or The News from Spain, in which an ailing, elderly mother and her daughter engage in a moving dance of fierce though ambivalent attachment. I think my personal favorite (a hard choice to make) is Jim Shepard's The World to Come, which takes place in the mid-19th century on a somewhat desolate farm in which a wife discovers the beauty of a deep connection, only to have it snatched away.
But I have too many "favorites" to list them all. If you like short stories, 2013 was apparently a good year and here's a collection filled with lovely examples.
May 25, 2014
My general impression, reading about half this collection, is that the bar for what counts as being one of the Best American short stories of the year is pretty low. Not that these are bad stories, just that that I went in expecting that the best stories would be ones that were truly original, revelatory, and somehow testing the limits of the short story form. Instead, this collection tends to favour writing that is competent rather than groundbreaking. I say this not as much of the individual stories, many of which were good (and some that were underwhelming, and one that was rather amazingly bad ["Magic Man"]), as the collection itself. I may have enjoyed some of these stories more in more varied and adventurous collections than this one.
March 22, 2014
I enjoyed this year's collection very much. Many seemed like prosey choices. What I mean is many of the choices read to me like the great prose outweighed the actual story, but hey, I'm not exactly complaining. My personal favorites were "Malaria" "Miss Laura" "The Chair" "A Voice in the Night" "Nemecia" "The Semplica-Girl Diaries" (I'd already read it, but read it again :-) ) and "Breatharians". If you like landscape stories (internal landscape/external landscape) and you are into poetic prose, this is a good collection.
May 12, 2019
Found myself starting, and then skimming or even skipping, most of the stories in this collection. So many of these stories are simply too “preachy”; the authors seem to want to beat up the reader over some social issue(s), and do so in a very heavy-handed manner.
I don’t mind a short story making a social statement. In fact, I like a short story that gives me pause and makes me think. But you need not hit me with a shovel! These stories are mostly depressing. This collection was disappointing.
I don’t mind a short story making a social statement. In fact, I like a short story that gives me pause and makes me think. But you need not hit me with a shovel! These stories are mostly depressing. This collection was disappointing.
January 14, 2016
Still strong, but I think I may have enjoyed it less overall. Guest editor Elizabeth Stout's motif about how she liked stories with a particular voice, a la the olden days of mostly telephone communication, fell a little flat for me. Perhaps because some of the stories tried a little too hard at voice or craft for my tastes. The worst offenders were probably the ones closest to a fault in my own writing style--overwhelmingly narrative, without enough dialogue or anything else to allow the reader to come up for air.
Still, I had plenty of favorites--and even honroable mentions. :P
"Miss Lora" by Junot Diaz {The New Yorker). Second person account of a teenager's sexual relationship with a middle aged neighbor after his philandering brother dies of cancer.
"Horned Men" by Karl Taro Greenfeld (Zyzzyva). A mortgage broker who lost his job in the foreclosure crisis moves his family to a smaller house and ponders his possible guilt.
"Magic Man" by Sheila Kohler (Yale Review). A late-thirties mother rails against her own lost innocence while, unknowingly, her daughter is ensnared by a pedophile.
"Train" by Alice Munro (Harper's Magazine). A WWII veteran in Canada keeps running from his past over the course of 20ish years.
"Chapter Two" by Atonya Nelson (The New Yorker). A woman goes to AA meetings and tells stories about her wacky neighbor, while hiding more serious details about the neighbor and herself.
"The Tunnel, or The News from Spain" by Joan Wickersham (Glimmer Train). A daughter grows closer to her mother in her mom's last years, juxtaposed against a series of romantic relationships.
"Nemencia" by Kirstin Valdez Quade (Narrative Magaine). A young girl-turned-woman feels resentment towards a cousin who is a family legend after surviving a tragedy that she never seems to process fully.
Honorable mentions:
"The Provincials" by Daniel Alarcon--about a father and son who travel to the father's hometown where the son pretends to be his American brother. Liked the theme of resentment, but the women were so thinly drawn.
"A Voice in the Night" by Steven Milhauser, where a middle-aged Jewish atheist recalls hearing the story of Samuel in Sunday School and staying up as a young boy to hear the call of Gd. One of those examples of bogged down narrative, a little.
"Philanthropy" by Suzanne Rivecca--might be the story I relate to most personally, especially where a drug addict turned social worker tries explaining to a potential donor that you can't just ignore and move beyond your past--it informs who you are. But the writing could be a little pretentious, especially when the protagonist and author were obviously of the same mind, politically.
Still, I had plenty of favorites--and even honroable mentions. :P
"Miss Lora" by Junot Diaz {The New Yorker). Second person account of a teenager's sexual relationship with a middle aged neighbor after his philandering brother dies of cancer.
"Horned Men" by Karl Taro Greenfeld (Zyzzyva). A mortgage broker who lost his job in the foreclosure crisis moves his family to a smaller house and ponders his possible guilt.
"Magic Man" by Sheila Kohler (Yale Review). A late-thirties mother rails against her own lost innocence while, unknowingly, her daughter is ensnared by a pedophile.
"Train" by Alice Munro (Harper's Magazine). A WWII veteran in Canada keeps running from his past over the course of 20ish years.
"Chapter Two" by Atonya Nelson (The New Yorker). A woman goes to AA meetings and tells stories about her wacky neighbor, while hiding more serious details about the neighbor and herself.
"The Tunnel, or The News from Spain" by Joan Wickersham (Glimmer Train). A daughter grows closer to her mother in her mom's last years, juxtaposed against a series of romantic relationships.
"Nemencia" by Kirstin Valdez Quade (Narrative Magaine). A young girl-turned-woman feels resentment towards a cousin who is a family legend after surviving a tragedy that she never seems to process fully.
Honorable mentions:
"The Provincials" by Daniel Alarcon--about a father and son who travel to the father's hometown where the son pretends to be his American brother. Liked the theme of resentment, but the women were so thinly drawn.
"A Voice in the Night" by Steven Milhauser, where a middle-aged Jewish atheist recalls hearing the story of Samuel in Sunday School and staying up as a young boy to hear the call of Gd. One of those examples of bogged down narrative, a little.
"Philanthropy" by Suzanne Rivecca--might be the story I relate to most personally, especially where a drug addict turned social worker tries explaining to a potential donor that you can't just ignore and move beyond your past--it informs who you are. But the writing could be a little pretentious, especially when the protagonist and author were obviously of the same mind, politically.
February 3, 2014
How does one rate a book built by many minds, whose whole is still separated into the pieces provided by each author, never integrated, never synthesized into the singular? If any of the stories are good, regardless of the bad, it's almost impossible to get above an average of three. I liked some of these stories a fair bit, especially "Breatharians," "The Tunnel or The News From Spain," "Chapter Two," and "The Magic Man,"
but overall, while the writing was sound or outright inspired all around, I was underwhelmed. As of late I find myself questioning the progression of stories and what it means for one to be complete. I realize it's a paradox, as stories don't end, they merely stop for breath. But that said, many of the endings of these award winning stories jar me, stopping abruptly or in strange places that stick out like comma splices to a trained eye. So I sit questioning their merit as a whole after following their meandering journeys to empty fields and cliff fades absent views. What makes a good story? What makes a good ending? If nothing else, I think the B.A.S.S. series serves to keep us questioning, which in turn serves to keep us reading and reevaluating; and as long as we do that, the answers and genres they're attached to, will continue to grow. That makes the frustration and aching wonder worth it in the end.
but overall, while the writing was sound or outright inspired all around, I was underwhelmed. As of late I find myself questioning the progression of stories and what it means for one to be complete. I realize it's a paradox, as stories don't end, they merely stop for breath. But that said, many of the endings of these award winning stories jar me, stopping abruptly or in strange places that stick out like comma splices to a trained eye. So I sit questioning their merit as a whole after following their meandering journeys to empty fields and cliff fades absent views. What makes a good story? What makes a good ending? If nothing else, I think the B.A.S.S. series serves to keep us questioning, which in turn serves to keep us reading and reevaluating; and as long as we do that, the answers and genres they're attached to, will continue to grow. That makes the frustration and aching wonder worth it in the end.
November 21, 2024
By their very nature, this annual collection of the best short stories of the previous year is filled with an eclectic selection because they are written by such diverse authors. This is, indeed, what makes these books so special.
Author Elizabeth Strout was charged with choosing the stories for 2013 edition, and to accomplish this mighty task she read dozens and dozens and dozens of short stories to select the 20 published here. An award-winning list of authors is represented, including Junot Díaz, Lorrie Moore, Alice Munro, Kirstin Valdez Quade, and George Saunders, among others.
Some of my favorites:
• "Magic Man," by Sheila Kohler (originally published in Yale Review): It's Christmas, and Sandra's marriage is in trouble. Her writer husband stays home in Paris with his 19-year-old mistress, while Sandra and their three little girls travel to be with her family in South Africa. They are staying in a hotel, and the story takes place poolside. With bruises plainly showing, Sandra's sister is praising the wonders of her husband. Sandra is distracted. Then her eldest daughter, 8-year-old S.P., says she has to go to the restroom. What happens then is horrifying as a strange man, whom S.P. believes is the Magic Man she has concocted as a recurring character in the stories she tells her little sisters, approaches her.
• "Encounters with Unexpected Animals," by Bret Anthony Johnston (originally published in Esquire): Robbie is an immature 15-year-old boy who has a 17-year-old girlfriend with tattoos, green hair, and a reputation. Lambright, Robbie's dad, offers to the drive the girl home one night to tell her to steer clear of his son. What happens next is chilling.
• "Train," by Alice Munro (originally published in Harper's Magazine): Jackson is returning to his Canadian home by train after serving in World War II, but for mysterious reasons he jumps off the train before he gets there. A kind older woman offers to feed him breakfast. He never leaves. Years later when he takes her to a hospital in Toronto for breast cancer surgery, we find out the secret he has been harboring all this time. This is a powerful and haunting story about erasing the past in an attempt to become someone new.
• "Nemecia," by Kirstin Valdez Quade (originally published in Narrative Magazine): At age five, Nemecia witnessed a horrific tragedy, and she is sent to live with her aunt and uncle. For a while, she is the only child, but when they have a daughter and that child grows a little older, Nemecia is filled with rivalry and envy of her cousin. She does cruel and violent things to Maria in "secret fits of rage and adoration," which the grown-ups never see. How Maria handles it through the escalation of bitterness and hurts is the treasure of this story.
By far the weirdest story of the bunch is "The Semplica-Girl Diaries," by George Saunders. It was originally published in The New Yorker, but I read it in 2023 when I read his short story collection "The Tenth of December." It was really good to reread this story, and I enjoyed it much more the second time around, mostly because I better understood what was happening. The plot: The ultimate status symbol for the suburban lawn and garden is something so outrageous and cruel it boggles the mind. But that's not how the characters in this startling story see it. The story is told in a father's diary entries, written in choppy, incomplete sentences—and it's brilliant. Do read the "Contributors' Notes" at the end to find out how Saunders conceived of this most original storyline.
Author Elizabeth Strout was charged with choosing the stories for 2013 edition, and to accomplish this mighty task she read dozens and dozens and dozens of short stories to select the 20 published here. An award-winning list of authors is represented, including Junot Díaz, Lorrie Moore, Alice Munro, Kirstin Valdez Quade, and George Saunders, among others.
Some of my favorites:
• "Magic Man," by Sheila Kohler (originally published in Yale Review): It's Christmas, and Sandra's marriage is in trouble. Her writer husband stays home in Paris with his 19-year-old mistress, while Sandra and their three little girls travel to be with her family in South Africa. They are staying in a hotel, and the story takes place poolside. With bruises plainly showing, Sandra's sister is praising the wonders of her husband. Sandra is distracted. Then her eldest daughter, 8-year-old S.P., says she has to go to the restroom. What happens then is horrifying as a strange man, whom S.P. believes is the Magic Man she has concocted as a recurring character in the stories she tells her little sisters, approaches her.
• "Encounters with Unexpected Animals," by Bret Anthony Johnston (originally published in Esquire): Robbie is an immature 15-year-old boy who has a 17-year-old girlfriend with tattoos, green hair, and a reputation. Lambright, Robbie's dad, offers to the drive the girl home one night to tell her to steer clear of his son. What happens next is chilling.
• "Train," by Alice Munro (originally published in Harper's Magazine): Jackson is returning to his Canadian home by train after serving in World War II, but for mysterious reasons he jumps off the train before he gets there. A kind older woman offers to feed him breakfast. He never leaves. Years later when he takes her to a hospital in Toronto for breast cancer surgery, we find out the secret he has been harboring all this time. This is a powerful and haunting story about erasing the past in an attempt to become someone new.
• "Nemecia," by Kirstin Valdez Quade (originally published in Narrative Magazine): At age five, Nemecia witnessed a horrific tragedy, and she is sent to live with her aunt and uncle. For a while, she is the only child, but when they have a daughter and that child grows a little older, Nemecia is filled with rivalry and envy of her cousin. She does cruel and violent things to Maria in "secret fits of rage and adoration," which the grown-ups never see. How Maria handles it through the escalation of bitterness and hurts is the treasure of this story.
By far the weirdest story of the bunch is "The Semplica-Girl Diaries," by George Saunders. It was originally published in The New Yorker, but I read it in 2023 when I read his short story collection "The Tenth of December." It was really good to reread this story, and I enjoyed it much more the second time around, mostly because I better understood what was happening. The plot: The ultimate status symbol for the suburban lawn and garden is something so outrageous and cruel it boggles the mind. But that's not how the characters in this startling story see it. The story is told in a father's diary entries, written in choppy, incomplete sentences—and it's brilliant. Do read the "Contributors' Notes" at the end to find out how Saunders conceived of this most original storyline.
July 11, 2021
Series Editor Heidi Pitlor in her forward writes about the effects on writers after a traumatizing event such as 9/11 or, especially, the Sandy Hook school massacre. Mass violence seems to have become so commonplace but she appears to be especially aware of the Newtown shootings because she was a mother to young school children. I think her head was in a certain place when she was working on this project.
In Elizabeth Strout’s introduction, she explains her process of making her selections of stories for this anthology. “So if you wonder why I chose the stories I chose, I would say it had a great deal to do with voice. That sound – if it is working well – has authority, probably the most important dimension of voice. … And we don’t want a writer whose voice wobbles or becomes false. I don’t think readers think about this analytically, but instead, they experience it as a feeling about the writer that grows stronger as they read: I want to be in your company, I want to keep going. I like the way you sound.”
Strout says “Nonetheless, the subjects that are developed in this collection are wonderful, varied and full of surprises because a good storytellers know how to surprise.” She is absolutely correct in my opinion. This is why I am a big fan of short stories. They offer surprises in smaller packages.
Taking a tally of my ratings for each story, this collection has quite a few that I gave high marks. There are seven that I thought were especially good, nine that were pretty good, three that I just liked and one that I found frustrating. I could not even get what the author was trying to say even in her notes on the story. But the number of stories that I rated highly made this a terrific read.
The ones I thought were noteworthy were:
Miss Lora by Junot Diaz
Nemecia by Kirstin Valdez Quade
Philanthropy by Suzanne Rivecca
The Semplica-Girl Diaries by George Saunders
These two I thought especially notable:
The World to Come by Jim Shepard
The Tunnel, or The News from Spain by Joan Wickersham
I am reading my way through this series to catch up to the current year's edition which started in 1989. I do not think I will accomplish this in 2021 but it is good to have a reading goal. Then I may try working my way backward. Just something to think about.
In Elizabeth Strout’s introduction, she explains her process of making her selections of stories for this anthology. “So if you wonder why I chose the stories I chose, I would say it had a great deal to do with voice. That sound – if it is working well – has authority, probably the most important dimension of voice. … And we don’t want a writer whose voice wobbles or becomes false. I don’t think readers think about this analytically, but instead, they experience it as a feeling about the writer that grows stronger as they read: I want to be in your company, I want to keep going. I like the way you sound.”
Strout says “Nonetheless, the subjects that are developed in this collection are wonderful, varied and full of surprises because a good storytellers know how to surprise.” She is absolutely correct in my opinion. This is why I am a big fan of short stories. They offer surprises in smaller packages.
Taking a tally of my ratings for each story, this collection has quite a few that I gave high marks. There are seven that I thought were especially good, nine that were pretty good, three that I just liked and one that I found frustrating. I could not even get what the author was trying to say even in her notes on the story. But the number of stories that I rated highly made this a terrific read.
The ones I thought were noteworthy were:
Miss Lora by Junot Diaz
Nemecia by Kirstin Valdez Quade
Philanthropy by Suzanne Rivecca
The Semplica-Girl Diaries by George Saunders
These two I thought especially notable:
The World to Come by Jim Shepard
The Tunnel, or The News from Spain by Joan Wickersham
I am reading my way through this series to catch up to the current year's edition which started in 1989. I do not think I will accomplish this in 2021 but it is good to have a reading goal. Then I may try working my way backward. Just something to think about.
June 7, 2021
This is the book I kept in the car so I'd have something to read when I sat in a waiting room or while dining out. So it took a while to finish.
A few of these short stories are personally memorable, but my favorite is "Semplica-Girls Diaries" by Pulitzer Prize winner George Saunders. The diary form he uses to tell the story suits me and the father telling the story through daily entries writes a lot like I do. He has his own fragmented language and code words. Maybe we all have a private shorthand for that. "Semplica-Girls" first appeared in The New Yorker in 2012.
This edition of short stories is one of a long series that features "the best," and like the other editions is edited by one of "the best" writers of our time. Obviously, the title, you know? But you won't really know until you read them. I suggest any "Best American Short Stories" will leave you with one that's unforgettable and one that you consider a gem for all the right reasons.
A few of these short stories are personally memorable, but my favorite is "Semplica-Girls Diaries" by Pulitzer Prize winner George Saunders. The diary form he uses to tell the story suits me and the father telling the story through daily entries writes a lot like I do. He has his own fragmented language and code words. Maybe we all have a private shorthand for that. "Semplica-Girls" first appeared in The New Yorker in 2012.
This edition of short stories is one of a long series that features "the best," and like the other editions is edited by one of "the best" writers of our time. Obviously, the title, you know? But you won't really know until you read them. I suggest any "Best American Short Stories" will leave you with one that's unforgettable and one that you consider a gem for all the right reasons.
September 20, 2022
Well, I read through this collection of short stories, but none of them left any strong impressions- I just didn't much care for them. That's just a question of taste- I wouldn't say they were poorly written or anything. I do remember thinking there were several disagreeable scenarios or characters that were unpleasant to read about.
I've seen a couple other American Short Story collections from other years in a nearby thrift store, but due to reading this one I think I'll let them alone.
I've seen a couple other American Short Story collections from other years in a nearby thrift store, but due to reading this one I think I'll let them alone.
October 14, 2017
I liked most of these stories and some I loved.
September 3, 2021
Another worthy addition to this popular series. (I'm a few years late getting to the 2013 volume, but it was definitely worth the wait.)
July 1, 2025
Here are twenty compellingly told, powerfully felt stories about urgent matters with profound consequences. (Hiedi Pitlor, in her Forward)
I like to drop a few lines on each story when I read an anthology like this. What or how much I write has more to do with how close I am to a keyboard when I finish it, or how soon after I get there. Please don’t assume my favorites are the ones whose notes take up the most space. Standouts for me were Miss Lora by Junot Diaz, Chapter Two by Antonya Nelson, Nemecia by Kristin Valdez Quade, and The World to Come by Jim Shepard.
The Provincials by Daniel Alarcon
Ther narrator is an out of work actor on the road with his father somewhere in Mexico on a journey to the funeral of a great uncle. I don’t know that it’s true, but I like to think all men have an obsession with the father-son dynamic. I wonder if it’s those of us who spend too long but too little energy wrapping our heads around our own fathers without ever truly connecting with them who pass this same legacy on to our sons.
“…of course no ideology can protect a son from the unwelcome inheritance of his father’s ambitions.”
“We felt maybe a little shame too, but we didn’t talk about it because we didn’t know how. Grown men with hurt feelings are transparent creatures; grown men who feel dimly they have done something wrong are positively opaque.”
Bravery by Charles Baxtor
I enjoyed this story, but I was a little unsure of where our characters were, mentally, was as we moved along. I suppose it’s a story about womanhood? Motherhood? It’s short and well-written. I just don’t know how I’m supposed to feel at the end.
Malaria by Michael Byers
It’s been a long time since I’ve really tried to write a short story, but I always liked this device, whatever it’s called, “Then he reached over and closed the door, and that was really the last I saw him until several months later, after everything had changed.” I feel like it lets you stay in the moment you’re writing about, even where it may lack action, with the promise of a big shift to come.
Miss Lora by Junot Diaz
So I fucking love fiction written in the second person. Maybe it’s because I thought Choose Your Own Adventure books were so cool as a child, but really it’s because I fell so madly in love with If on a winter’s night a traveler in college. In this case, it doesn’t hurt that Junot Diaz, who wrote one of my favorite books.
“You were at that age where you could fall in love with a girl over an expression, a gesture. That’s what happened with your girlfriend, Paloma – she stopped to pick up her urse, and your heart flew out of you.”
This story is pretty sexy too and I wonder if the sexy-book-market is missing out by not producing more books in the first person. Aren’t those books usually for the sake of fantasy-fulfillment? Or would it cross a line into too lewd if it was you, the reader, and not So-and-so the fairy princess who was having all the raunchy adevnrues?
Horned Men by Karl Taro Greenfield
I grab copies of these anthologies whenever I find them I the world, rarely buying the current year’s edition. This is mostly just because I feel compelled when I see them at a thrift store, but it’s also because it tells you something (maybe not much, but something) about the year the stories were written. What was important (at least to that year’s editor) or what was happening in the world. 2013 doesn’t sound that long ago, but it was more than a decade – back before I even had kids.
2013 wasn’t so long after the subprime mortgage bubble burst (around 2008-2009 when I was graduating law school into a catastrophe of an economy), so lines like this fit: “When the firm went belly-up, causing an entire Orange County business park to go vacant in just sixty days and stranding Bob in too much house with too much debt, he didn’t hesitate to drive away, his wife and daughter in the Caravan and Bob in his Explorer. That’s what all the TV news segments vilifying mortgage brokers never mentioned: that the brokers had drunk the Kool-Aid as well, most of them, and were leveraged and ARMED to the teeth, so when the bubble burst, Bob and his fellow brokers had been among the first to bust.”
This would feel like historical fiction today, in 2025. At least it would to me, since I think of that time as a distinct historical period, even if 2013 was maybe the tail end of it. This story does a good job of simultaneously humanizing and vilifying the mortgage brokers of that time in a story that feels like it’s about a man and his family, not about economics.
The Third Dumpster by Gish Jen
Another recession-era story, this time about Chinese-American brothers fixing up a house for their Chinese-Chinese parents. “…this is what the recession mean in their neck of the woods: old people moving into purpuric ranch homes unless their unemployed children could do something about it.”
Encounters with Unexpected Animals by Anthony Johnston
Very short one. Who is the villain here, the father or the girl?
Magic Man by Sheila Kohler
I guess this is a pretty great story if you want to feel anxiety and disgust. The author must be aware, though not every reader would be, that minors in sexual assault cases are always referred to by their initials. I appreciated that quiet nuance.
The Chair by David Means
Ponderous. For such a brief story it felt like the paragraphs would never end.
A Voice in the Night by Steven Millhauser
If I didn’t have a weird fascination with Judaism, I wonder if this would have appealed to me. It’s about writing as calling framed along with the concept of religious calling.
Referential by Lorrie Moore
This felt like the kind of story I would write, exploring the miserable circumstances people have to survive in real life. It asks, among other things, about what we owe one another in our relationships and what we owe even as those relationships deteriorate and die, but it specifically looks at the danger(?) of becoming a father-figure.
“She had not actually been able to read the caller ID without her glasses, and had invented the part about its being Pete’s number, but he had made it the truth anyway, which was the black magic of lies and good guesses, nimble bluffs.”
Train by Alice Munro
At first I wasn’t digging this, but Alice Munro is amazing so it turned out good.
Chapter Two by Antonya Nelson
“like around nine, bing-bong, drunk as a skunk, as usual, right in the middle of this show my roommate and I are watching. I go to the door and there she is, fifty-something, a totally naked lady standing under the porch light.”
This one was touching. It starts with the amusing image of Bergeron Love but for how silly the stories of Bergeron are, the story really captures the heartbreak of alcoholism pretty well.
Nemecia by Kristin Valdez Quade
“My cousin was fierce with her love and her hate, and sometimes I couldn’t tell the difference.”
A story, I think, about how we feel the need to be loved. Especially in childhood. But it’s also about how we are damaged and how we are repaired, about the cracks in paceline or the cracks in ourselves, about where the glue shows and about how we try to hide from the wounds of our past.
Philanthropy by Suzanne Rivecca
Another one about addiction, or at least partly so, but it doesn’t have fun of old naked Bergeron. Addiction and the places where we try to treat it in America is the backdrop, anyway, of a story about the distance (“the oceans beneath oceans”) between a mother and her child – how hard it is to really know someone and what they need and how or why they hurt.
The Semplica-Girl Diaries by George Saunders
This one might have depressed me the most at the start. I can so easily relate to the narrator as he wants a better life for his children and as he has to measure himself against the ostentatious lives of those around him. It’s something that haunts me every day and though he and I couldn’t approach it more differently, it pains me to read it.
But the story takes a wild turn. It’s something else entirely.
The World to Come by Jim Shepard
Set around 1850 and written as a series of diary entries as a woman, mourning the death of her two year old daughter and trying to navigate life on the farm she shares with her husband, falls in love with a neighbor. At times touching and often heartbreaking, I thought this piece was beautifully written and executed the confusion and danger surrounding this kind of relationship between two women at that time without melodrama.
The Wilderness by Elizabeth Tallent
Painful to reads, not emotionally, but just as a piece of writing.
The Tunnel, or the News from Spain by Joan Wickersham
The relationship our narrator has with her mother has she nears the end of her life, but also her difficulty making room for an ailing and aging parent while she still has her own life with its own obligations and challenges and rhythms.
“So here’s the glib psychological explanation: Harriet had always craved attention and now, made vulnerable by illness, needed more; Rebecca had failed at her marriage and needed to feel a hero.
All of which is true. But it was more that they both discovered, almost shyly, that they liked each other. That they were having, in the middle of all this dire stuff, a good time together.”
Breatharians by Callan Wink
A jarring start as August is off to kill the cats in the barn for his father, a dollar a tail, and he could pick whatever smashing implement he wanted. It’s not a story about killing cats though – that’s just a start to show you what kind of man his father is and about August, who is willing to do it – but there is plenty of cat murder. The story is about the paths set out before August: that of his father who is base if not evil and whose life will always be the farm though he will never be the master of it, or that of his mother who barely lives in this world, who aspires for him to go off to college, to see the world, and create some grand if indistinct existence for himself.
I like to drop a few lines on each story when I read an anthology like this. What or how much I write has more to do with how close I am to a keyboard when I finish it, or how soon after I get there. Please don’t assume my favorites are the ones whose notes take up the most space. Standouts for me were Miss Lora by Junot Diaz, Chapter Two by Antonya Nelson, Nemecia by Kristin Valdez Quade, and The World to Come by Jim Shepard.
The Provincials by Daniel Alarcon
Ther narrator is an out of work actor on the road with his father somewhere in Mexico on a journey to the funeral of a great uncle. I don’t know that it’s true, but I like to think all men have an obsession with the father-son dynamic. I wonder if it’s those of us who spend too long but too little energy wrapping our heads around our own fathers without ever truly connecting with them who pass this same legacy on to our sons.
“…of course no ideology can protect a son from the unwelcome inheritance of his father’s ambitions.”
“We felt maybe a little shame too, but we didn’t talk about it because we didn’t know how. Grown men with hurt feelings are transparent creatures; grown men who feel dimly they have done something wrong are positively opaque.”
Bravery by Charles Baxtor
I enjoyed this story, but I was a little unsure of where our characters were, mentally, was as we moved along. I suppose it’s a story about womanhood? Motherhood? It’s short and well-written. I just don’t know how I’m supposed to feel at the end.
Malaria by Michael Byers
It’s been a long time since I’ve really tried to write a short story, but I always liked this device, whatever it’s called, “Then he reached over and closed the door, and that was really the last I saw him until several months later, after everything had changed.” I feel like it lets you stay in the moment you’re writing about, even where it may lack action, with the promise of a big shift to come.
Miss Lora by Junot Diaz
So I fucking love fiction written in the second person. Maybe it’s because I thought Choose Your Own Adventure books were so cool as a child, but really it’s because I fell so madly in love with If on a winter’s night a traveler in college. In this case, it doesn’t hurt that Junot Diaz, who wrote one of my favorite books.
“You were at that age where you could fall in love with a girl over an expression, a gesture. That’s what happened with your girlfriend, Paloma – she stopped to pick up her urse, and your heart flew out of you.”
This story is pretty sexy too and I wonder if the sexy-book-market is missing out by not producing more books in the first person. Aren’t those books usually for the sake of fantasy-fulfillment? Or would it cross a line into too lewd if it was you, the reader, and not So-and-so the fairy princess who was having all the raunchy adevnrues?
Horned Men by Karl Taro Greenfield
I grab copies of these anthologies whenever I find them I the world, rarely buying the current year’s edition. This is mostly just because I feel compelled when I see them at a thrift store, but it’s also because it tells you something (maybe not much, but something) about the year the stories were written. What was important (at least to that year’s editor) or what was happening in the world. 2013 doesn’t sound that long ago, but it was more than a decade – back before I even had kids.
2013 wasn’t so long after the subprime mortgage bubble burst (around 2008-2009 when I was graduating law school into a catastrophe of an economy), so lines like this fit: “When the firm went belly-up, causing an entire Orange County business park to go vacant in just sixty days and stranding Bob in too much house with too much debt, he didn’t hesitate to drive away, his wife and daughter in the Caravan and Bob in his Explorer. That’s what all the TV news segments vilifying mortgage brokers never mentioned: that the brokers had drunk the Kool-Aid as well, most of them, and were leveraged and ARMED to the teeth, so when the bubble burst, Bob and his fellow brokers had been among the first to bust.”
This would feel like historical fiction today, in 2025. At least it would to me, since I think of that time as a distinct historical period, even if 2013 was maybe the tail end of it. This story does a good job of simultaneously humanizing and vilifying the mortgage brokers of that time in a story that feels like it’s about a man and his family, not about economics.
The Third Dumpster by Gish Jen
Another recession-era story, this time about Chinese-American brothers fixing up a house for their Chinese-Chinese parents. “…this is what the recession mean in their neck of the woods: old people moving into purpuric ranch homes unless their unemployed children could do something about it.”
Encounters with Unexpected Animals by Anthony Johnston
Very short one. Who is the villain here, the father or the girl?
Magic Man by Sheila Kohler
I guess this is a pretty great story if you want to feel anxiety and disgust. The author must be aware, though not every reader would be, that minors in sexual assault cases are always referred to by their initials. I appreciated that quiet nuance.
The Chair by David Means
Ponderous. For such a brief story it felt like the paragraphs would never end.
A Voice in the Night by Steven Millhauser
If I didn’t have a weird fascination with Judaism, I wonder if this would have appealed to me. It’s about writing as calling framed along with the concept of religious calling.
Referential by Lorrie Moore
This felt like the kind of story I would write, exploring the miserable circumstances people have to survive in real life. It asks, among other things, about what we owe one another in our relationships and what we owe even as those relationships deteriorate and die, but it specifically looks at the danger(?) of becoming a father-figure.
“She had not actually been able to read the caller ID without her glasses, and had invented the part about its being Pete’s number, but he had made it the truth anyway, which was the black magic of lies and good guesses, nimble bluffs.”
Train by Alice Munro
At first I wasn’t digging this, but Alice Munro is amazing so it turned out good.
Chapter Two by Antonya Nelson
“like around nine, bing-bong, drunk as a skunk, as usual, right in the middle of this show my roommate and I are watching. I go to the door and there she is, fifty-something, a totally naked lady standing under the porch light.”
This one was touching. It starts with the amusing image of Bergeron Love but for how silly the stories of Bergeron are, the story really captures the heartbreak of alcoholism pretty well.
Nemecia by Kristin Valdez Quade
“My cousin was fierce with her love and her hate, and sometimes I couldn’t tell the difference.”
A story, I think, about how we feel the need to be loved. Especially in childhood. But it’s also about how we are damaged and how we are repaired, about the cracks in paceline or the cracks in ourselves, about where the glue shows and about how we try to hide from the wounds of our past.
Philanthropy by Suzanne Rivecca
Another one about addiction, or at least partly so, but it doesn’t have fun of old naked Bergeron. Addiction and the places where we try to treat it in America is the backdrop, anyway, of a story about the distance (“the oceans beneath oceans”) between a mother and her child – how hard it is to really know someone and what they need and how or why they hurt.
The Semplica-Girl Diaries by George Saunders
This one might have depressed me the most at the start. I can so easily relate to the narrator as he wants a better life for his children and as he has to measure himself against the ostentatious lives of those around him. It’s something that haunts me every day and though he and I couldn’t approach it more differently, it pains me to read it.
But the story takes a wild turn. It’s something else entirely.
The World to Come by Jim Shepard
Set around 1850 and written as a series of diary entries as a woman, mourning the death of her two year old daughter and trying to navigate life on the farm she shares with her husband, falls in love with a neighbor. At times touching and often heartbreaking, I thought this piece was beautifully written and executed the confusion and danger surrounding this kind of relationship between two women at that time without melodrama.
The Wilderness by Elizabeth Tallent
Painful to reads, not emotionally, but just as a piece of writing.
The Tunnel, or the News from Spain by Joan Wickersham
The relationship our narrator has with her mother has she nears the end of her life, but also her difficulty making room for an ailing and aging parent while she still has her own life with its own obligations and challenges and rhythms.
“So here’s the glib psychological explanation: Harriet had always craved attention and now, made vulnerable by illness, needed more; Rebecca had failed at her marriage and needed to feel a hero.
All of which is true. But it was more that they both discovered, almost shyly, that they liked each other. That they were having, in the middle of all this dire stuff, a good time together.”
Breatharians by Callan Wink
A jarring start as August is off to kill the cats in the barn for his father, a dollar a tail, and he could pick whatever smashing implement he wanted. It’s not a story about killing cats though – that’s just a start to show you what kind of man his father is and about August, who is willing to do it – but there is plenty of cat murder. The story is about the paths set out before August: that of his father who is base if not evil and whose life will always be the farm though he will never be the master of it, or that of his mother who barely lives in this world, who aspires for him to go off to college, to see the world, and create some grand if indistinct existence for himself.
December 31, 2013
After a disappointing start in the first 6 stories, this year’s collection really took too for me. There are some wonderful, wonderful stories that I will reread shortly.
I grade these on a curve, being a little hard since my expectations are high.
The Provincials – Daniel Alarcon – 3: Very interesting structure. The thrust is that everyone is acting, but I was more grabbed by the idea that everyone wants to be someone else. There is no satisfaction in our true selves.
Bravery – Charles Baxter – 4: Compelling. The story pulled me along and seemed to fly by. The characters seem real and unique. It left me wanting more, which is always good in a short story.
Malaria – Michael Byers – 3.5: The perspective the story is told in is what makes it. George reminds me of people I have met. What does happen to them?
Miss Lora – Junot Diaz – 2.5: Ordinary. A mature topic handled well, but I am not sure why the story is included in the collection.
Horned Men – Karl Taro Greenfield – 3.5: I liked the symmetry in the main character with the horned man. However, the story never broke through into something grander for me.
The Third Dumpster – Gish Jen – 3: The story reminds me a bit of a friend who has foreign born parents. He bends over backwards making frequent accommodations instead of standing up to his parents. Like the characters in the story, he seems doomed to follow his parent’s wishes for life.
Encounters with Unexpected Animals – Bret Anthony Johnston – 4.5: Delightful! How does so much get in 4 pages?
Magic Man – Sheila Kohler – 3.5: Lives falling apart. Some realized, some not. I liked the dichotomy in the view between the mother and daughter.
The Chair – David Means – 4.5: The first story where the language and word choice struck me as profound. Great sentences pounding out an inner dialogue. The mix of love/anger/fear as a parent is beautiful.
A Voice in the Night – Steven Millhauser – 5: Bliss! Crazy good. The structure, the writing, the story, all of it is incredible. I have a lukewarm relationship with Millhauser, but this is off the charts good.
Referential – Lorrie Moore – 4: A lot of depth and subtext. A snapshot of two people in a relationship that is different to each of them.
Train – Alice Munro – 3.5: An enjoyable story, but I am not sure I get it.
Chapter Two – Antonya Nelson - 4: Very memorable characters. The author threaded the multiple timeline well. Accurate comments that other people’s deficiencies are always judged harsher than our own.
Nemecia – Kirstin Valdez Quade – 3.5: A decent tale about a child’s perceptions and how life is far from fair.
Philanthropy – Suzanne Rivecca – 5: A sledgehammer of a story that pounded and pounded me, but left me begging for more. On a different day it probably would have caused tears.
The Semplica-Girl Diaries – George Saunders – 5: The idea for the story is so bat-crazy-brilliant. How such a crazy idea is folded into such normalcy makes the story. It kept running through my head for days.
The World to Come – Jim Shepard – 3: A noble attempt to recreate a diary from ages past, but I did not buy it.
The Wilderness – Elizabeth Tallent – 4: It took a couple of pages to find the author’s cadence, but then it was thoroughly enjoyable.
The Tunnel, or The News from Spain – Joan Wickersham – 4.5: Great characters well developed.
Breatharians – Callan Wink – 3: Did not click for me.
I grade these on a curve, being a little hard since my expectations are high.
The Provincials – Daniel Alarcon – 3: Very interesting structure. The thrust is that everyone is acting, but I was more grabbed by the idea that everyone wants to be someone else. There is no satisfaction in our true selves.
Bravery – Charles Baxter – 4: Compelling. The story pulled me along and seemed to fly by. The characters seem real and unique. It left me wanting more, which is always good in a short story.
Malaria – Michael Byers – 3.5: The perspective the story is told in is what makes it. George reminds me of people I have met. What does happen to them?
Miss Lora – Junot Diaz – 2.5: Ordinary. A mature topic handled well, but I am not sure why the story is included in the collection.
Horned Men – Karl Taro Greenfield – 3.5: I liked the symmetry in the main character with the horned man. However, the story never broke through into something grander for me.
The Third Dumpster – Gish Jen – 3: The story reminds me a bit of a friend who has foreign born parents. He bends over backwards making frequent accommodations instead of standing up to his parents. Like the characters in the story, he seems doomed to follow his parent’s wishes for life.
Encounters with Unexpected Animals – Bret Anthony Johnston – 4.5: Delightful! How does so much get in 4 pages?
Magic Man – Sheila Kohler – 3.5: Lives falling apart. Some realized, some not. I liked the dichotomy in the view between the mother and daughter.
The Chair – David Means – 4.5: The first story where the language and word choice struck me as profound. Great sentences pounding out an inner dialogue. The mix of love/anger/fear as a parent is beautiful.
A Voice in the Night – Steven Millhauser – 5: Bliss! Crazy good. The structure, the writing, the story, all of it is incredible. I have a lukewarm relationship with Millhauser, but this is off the charts good.
Referential – Lorrie Moore – 4: A lot of depth and subtext. A snapshot of two people in a relationship that is different to each of them.
Train – Alice Munro – 3.5: An enjoyable story, but I am not sure I get it.
Chapter Two – Antonya Nelson - 4: Very memorable characters. The author threaded the multiple timeline well. Accurate comments that other people’s deficiencies are always judged harsher than our own.
Nemecia – Kirstin Valdez Quade – 3.5: A decent tale about a child’s perceptions and how life is far from fair.
Philanthropy – Suzanne Rivecca – 5: A sledgehammer of a story that pounded and pounded me, but left me begging for more. On a different day it probably would have caused tears.
The Semplica-Girl Diaries – George Saunders – 5: The idea for the story is so bat-crazy-brilliant. How such a crazy idea is folded into such normalcy makes the story. It kept running through my head for days.
The World to Come – Jim Shepard – 3: A noble attempt to recreate a diary from ages past, but I did not buy it.
The Wilderness – Elizabeth Tallent – 4: It took a couple of pages to find the author’s cadence, but then it was thoroughly enjoyable.
The Tunnel, or The News from Spain – Joan Wickersham – 4.5: Great characters well developed.
Breatharians – Callan Wink – 3: Did not click for me.
February 5, 2014
This collection is more cerebral than the series has been in the last few years--more concerned with going out of its way to render the moment as it occurs, through a character's searching and simultaneously calm perspective, rather than diving headlong into drama or indulging the current vogue (in both literary short fiction and independent cinema) for festivals of quirkiness. Particularly arresting stories in this vein were Jim Shepard's meditation on pain and desperation on the 19th century frontier, "The World to Come," as well as Elizabeth Tallent's stream of consciousness exploration of a professor on the edge, "The Wilderness."
For those desiring the usual flash with a mixture of raw sex and death in the midst of a failing marriage, the New Yorker finishes this collection with Callan Wink's "Breatharians," not to mention the inclusion of George Saunders' magical and malignant "The Semplica Girl Diaries." In the category of relationships falling apart among tribulation and denial, there is Lorrie Moore's deeply restrained "Referential." Joan Wickersham offers a passable retelling of the ancient conflict between mother and daughter in "The Tunnel, or the News From Spain," with a poignant exploration of sexual assertiveness at the expense of regret, asking how we claim our own lives while discovering exactly how much we owe our parents. The collection's best rendering of a relationship story that is personal and complicated with battles nonetheless recognizable to anyone coupled for the long term is Charles Baxter's "Bravery."
Many of these stories go further than merely giving an interesting, updated take on an old conflict. Suzanne Rivecca' "Philanthropy" seems to deliver a philosophical argument about the ontological essence of philanthropy in story form. Kirstiin Valdez Quade delivers a similar deconstruction of our notion of enemies, specifically nemeses, in "Nemecia."
Other works make assertions about, or push the boundaries of, storytelling. Alice Munro's recent short stories read like attempts to write a novel in short story form, and "Train" is a particularly successful example. Antonya Nelson's "Chapter Two" investigates our reasons for telling our stories, the uses we put them to. Steven Millhauser's "A Voice in the Night" reads like the short fiction counterpart to Michael Cunningham's novel "The Hours," developing three separate but parallel narratives along a single thematic line with satisfying results. Sheila Kohler's "Magic Man" uses storytelling and interpretation to render the causes and consequences of sexual abuse amidst a deeply unhappy marriage.
A particularly eerie contribution, "Horned Men," gives us Karl Taro Greenfeld's rendering of the economic fallout after the mortgage-backed securities crisis on a very personal, heartfelt level, as we watch a family on the verge of falling apart. Other stories from this collection that peel back some of the layers of family drama are Daniel Alarcon's "The Provincials" and Gish Jen's "The Third Dumpster." David Means captures the same nuance and drama in the smaller context of a stay-at-home dad struggling to bring up his son in "The Chair."
Every other story is worth reading, but to my mind less memorable. All in all, a solid installment in the series, with the first stories mentioned in this review being worth the price of admission on their own.
For those desiring the usual flash with a mixture of raw sex and death in the midst of a failing marriage, the New Yorker finishes this collection with Callan Wink's "Breatharians," not to mention the inclusion of George Saunders' magical and malignant "The Semplica Girl Diaries." In the category of relationships falling apart among tribulation and denial, there is Lorrie Moore's deeply restrained "Referential." Joan Wickersham offers a passable retelling of the ancient conflict between mother and daughter in "The Tunnel, or the News From Spain," with a poignant exploration of sexual assertiveness at the expense of regret, asking how we claim our own lives while discovering exactly how much we owe our parents. The collection's best rendering of a relationship story that is personal and complicated with battles nonetheless recognizable to anyone coupled for the long term is Charles Baxter's "Bravery."
Many of these stories go further than merely giving an interesting, updated take on an old conflict. Suzanne Rivecca' "Philanthropy" seems to deliver a philosophical argument about the ontological essence of philanthropy in story form. Kirstiin Valdez Quade delivers a similar deconstruction of our notion of enemies, specifically nemeses, in "Nemecia."
Other works make assertions about, or push the boundaries of, storytelling. Alice Munro's recent short stories read like attempts to write a novel in short story form, and "Train" is a particularly successful example. Antonya Nelson's "Chapter Two" investigates our reasons for telling our stories, the uses we put them to. Steven Millhauser's "A Voice in the Night" reads like the short fiction counterpart to Michael Cunningham's novel "The Hours," developing three separate but parallel narratives along a single thematic line with satisfying results. Sheila Kohler's "Magic Man" uses storytelling and interpretation to render the causes and consequences of sexual abuse amidst a deeply unhappy marriage.
A particularly eerie contribution, "Horned Men," gives us Karl Taro Greenfeld's rendering of the economic fallout after the mortgage-backed securities crisis on a very personal, heartfelt level, as we watch a family on the verge of falling apart. Other stories from this collection that peel back some of the layers of family drama are Daniel Alarcon's "The Provincials" and Gish Jen's "The Third Dumpster." David Means captures the same nuance and drama in the smaller context of a stay-at-home dad struggling to bring up his son in "The Chair."
Every other story is worth reading, but to my mind less memorable. All in all, a solid installment in the series, with the first stories mentioned in this review being worth the price of admission on their own.
December 1, 2014
While most of the stories in this collection are quite good, I was surprised by how many of them were basically fixated around the most played out straight people tropes. Stories in this volume come in the following flavors:
1. I'm a middle aged man with a wife and young girls sure are sexy.
2. I'm a teen boy with a girlfriend and middle aged women sure are sexy.
3. I'm a married woman who wants modern freedom but also traditional gender roles because I feel useless when my husband is better with babies than me.
4. I am a child of some married heterosexuals cheating on one another with teenagers and I express my agony in nonverbal ways.
5. I am a lonely intellectual woman who persists in forming dependent romances with men who never quite give their all to me and bail when it counts most.
It just goes on and on. It's like, woah there, I guess the theme of literature in 2013 was Anxiety About The Irrelevance of Monogamy and The Family. Each author on their own is a master of the craft, Junot Diaz and Loorie Moore are personal favorites and I love what they in particular tend to touch on about The Chasms Between Men and Women.
The stories in this are about many things, but it's hard not to notice the thematic pattern as a gay person who mostly reads sci fi about cool robots and rad ghosts and cool-rad ghost robots. There's a lot to be said about the way relationships fail and something something profundity, modernity, but it gives this otherwise delightful and delicious book a stale aftertaste. I picked up a bunch of literary magazines in the bookstore the other day and every single story I opened to was an Infidelity Plotline. Going back to sci fi for a while.
1. I'm a middle aged man with a wife and young girls sure are sexy.
2. I'm a teen boy with a girlfriend and middle aged women sure are sexy.
3. I'm a married woman who wants modern freedom but also traditional gender roles because I feel useless when my husband is better with babies than me.
4. I am a child of some married heterosexuals cheating on one another with teenagers and I express my agony in nonverbal ways.
5. I am a lonely intellectual woman who persists in forming dependent romances with men who never quite give their all to me and bail when it counts most.
It just goes on and on. It's like, woah there, I guess the theme of literature in 2013 was Anxiety About The Irrelevance of Monogamy and The Family. Each author on their own is a master of the craft, Junot Diaz and Loorie Moore are personal favorites and I love what they in particular tend to touch on about The Chasms Between Men and Women.
The stories in this are about many things, but it's hard not to notice the thematic pattern as a gay person who mostly reads sci fi about cool robots and rad ghosts and cool-rad ghost robots. There's a lot to be said about the way relationships fail and something something profundity, modernity, but it gives this otherwise delightful and delicious book a stale aftertaste. I picked up a bunch of literary magazines in the bookstore the other day and every single story I opened to was an Infidelity Plotline. Going back to sci fi for a while.
December 2, 2013
One of the better BASS collections from recent years. I loved how internal many of the narratives were--David Means's "The Chair" was incredible, as well as the almost dreamy, distantly-narrated "Malaria" by Michael Byers. Lorrie Moore's "Referential" almost made me cry ("Living did not mean one joy piled upon another. It was merely the hope for less pain, hope played like a playing card upon another hope, a wish for kindnesses and mercies to emerge like kings and queens in an unexpected twist in the game. One could hold the cards oneself or not: they would land the same way, regardless.") and Jim Shepard's "The Word to Come" definitely did, even though I had already read it in One Story. There were a few weird inclusions ("Encounters With Unexpected Animals" felt too slight, "Magic Man" a little heavy-handed, "A Voice in the Night" kind of tedious and unfinishable) but then there's Alice Munro, always perfect, and two unusually paced & plotted but flawlessly pulled-off stories about eccentric, inconvenient women who appear, altering the narrator's lives in subtle but undeniable ways--Suzanne Rivecca's "Philanthropy" and Antonya Nelson's "Chapter Two."
December 27, 2013
I read each new anthology in this series and they are always great. The regular current masters of this genre are here in this volume - Steven Millhauser, Alice Munro, Gish Jen, Lorrie Moore, and Elizabeth Tallent. Their stories were incredible as usual.
One that was even better was Jim Shepard's The World to Come, which began as an interesting account of a young woman’s life on an Amish farm in the 1850’s but ends with the horrible discovery of how religious fanaticism leads to abuse.
My favorite in the anthology was Suzanne Rivecca's story, Philanthropy, a tale about a woman caregiver at a treatment center for addicted girls who tries to raise money from a wealthy woman whose daughter killed herself due to a drug addiction.
All the stories in this collection re-affirm my conviction that in every single life that seems ordinary and without drama there is a tale of intense desires attained and denied, with lessons about the cost for pursuing those desires.
One that was even better was Jim Shepard's The World to Come, which began as an interesting account of a young woman’s life on an Amish farm in the 1850’s but ends with the horrible discovery of how religious fanaticism leads to abuse.
My favorite in the anthology was Suzanne Rivecca's story, Philanthropy, a tale about a woman caregiver at a treatment center for addicted girls who tries to raise money from a wealthy woman whose daughter killed herself due to a drug addiction.
All the stories in this collection re-affirm my conviction that in every single life that seems ordinary and without drama there is a tale of intense desires attained and denied, with lessons about the cost for pursuing those desires.
March 10, 2019
As a fan of Strout's writing, I had high hopes for this collection; to my surprise, it was mostly uninvolving. One could sense a pronounced déformation professionnelle: while each story had plenty to unpack, it often felt like Strout was privileging craft over both entertainment and edification. Moreover, her resistance to Pitlor's assistance, noted in Pitlor's preface, resulted in some awkward ordering (two diary stories in a row?) and thematic overrepresentation (e.g. meditations on literature/storytelling). All told, one of the weakest BASS collections I've read.
Favorites of the bunch, in rough order of preference:
* Kirstin Valdez Quade - "Nemecia"
* George Saunders - "The Semplica-Girl Diaries"
* Antonya Nelson - "Chapter Two"
* Alice Munro - "Train"
* Suzanne Rivecca - "Philanthropy"
Favorites of the bunch, in rough order of preference:
* Kirstin Valdez Quade - "Nemecia"
* George Saunders - "The Semplica-Girl Diaries"
* Antonya Nelson - "Chapter Two"
* Alice Munro - "Train"
* Suzanne Rivecca - "Philanthropy"
June 21, 2015
Solid collection of short stories. I'll cut to the chase and let you know the standouts. 'Malaria' by Michael Byers, Bret Anthony Johnston's 'Encounters with Unexpected Animals, 'Magic Man' by Sheila Kohler, 'Referential' by Lorrie Moore, 'Nemecia' by Kirstin Valdez Quade and George Saunders' 'The Semplica-Girl Diaries' are all worth your time. Engaging stories with great prose. But, that said, there is always one standout in collections like these. In this collection, it is without a doubt 'Miss Lora' by Junot Diaz. As he tells us in the contributors notes, he wrestled for seven years with this short story before triumphing over it. Fantastic story. If you read nothing else, read 'Miss Lora'.
May 3, 2019
Until about halfway though, I was having an abysmal time with this collection. Everything seemed to be about DIY home-construction projects, children, and God. It surprised me how different these collections can be from year to year. I still think about a few of the stories from the one edited by T.C. Boyle – the especially strange, otherworldly ones – but Elizabeth Strout’s selections were much more down to earth. Two or three of them (especially “The Tunnel, or The News from Spain”) did really grab me, but overall this was more of a dud than the 2015. Maybe it would’ve had more magic if I hadn’t previously read “The Semplica-Girl Diaries.”
April 17, 2014
A good collection and well worth buying. Elizabeth Strout has more tolerance for less plot than I do, but there are some great stories as well as some that tend to be a little on the slow side for my taste. Jim Shepherd's story alone is worth the price of the collection, and many others are also strong.
My favorites? Junot Diaz's "Miss Lora," Bret Anthony Johnston's "Encounters with Unexpected Animals," Alice Munro's "Train," George Saunder's "The Semplica-Girl Diaries," Jim Shepherd's "The World to Come," and Callan Wink's "The Breatharians."
My favorites? Junot Diaz's "Miss Lora," Bret Anthony Johnston's "Encounters with Unexpected Animals," Alice Munro's "Train," George Saunder's "The Semplica-Girl Diaries," Jim Shepherd's "The World to Come," and Callan Wink's "The Breatharians."
January 21, 2015
I love short stories, and pick this collection up when I can. A long time ago, someone told me that, if a book didn't grab you in 50 pages, to put it down. "Life's too short from crappy books."
Life's also too short for bad writing, but each story in here has some sort of redeeming quality, and they're over soon enough anyway. The voices are largely rich and moving, the POV varied, and the settings as different as they can be, but I enjoyed this for what it was. Also, to be able to look at who wrote the stuff that caught my eye and check and see if they have more work.
Life's also too short for bad writing, but each story in here has some sort of redeeming quality, and they're over soon enough anyway. The voices are largely rich and moving, the POV varied, and the settings as different as they can be, but I enjoyed this for what it was. Also, to be able to look at who wrote the stuff that caught my eye and check and see if they have more work.
July 22, 2018
I was astounded to find that I only liked one of all of these "Best" stories, and that one (after I avoided looking at author's names until after reading the story) was by Alice Munro, who I already read and like. And the brutality in the story by Callan Wink made me wish I'd never read the whole thing. Usually I read collections to gather a few wonderful authors to add to my to-read list. Not this collection.
December 9, 2013
Another very good year; a bit on the safe side, and a little heavy on The New Yorker. Still, I enjoyed the read. Details on each story blogged at A Just Recompense.
April 8, 2014
More like the "pretty good" American short stories of 2013
June 20, 2019
I cannot give it a rating because I need to go back and look at it. I can't recall.
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