What do you think?
Rate this book
The Best American Short Stories 2014: The Annual Literary Anthology Selected by Jennifer Egan
The best-selling and award-winning Jennifer Egan guest edits this year's The Best American Short Stories, the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction.
360 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2014
315 people are currently reading
1449 people want to read
About the author
Jennifer Egan
54 books8,533 followersJennifer Egan is the author of several novels and a short story collection. Her 2017 novel, Manhattan Beach, a New York Times bestseller, was awarded the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and was chosen as New York City’s One Book One New York read. Her previous novel, A Visit From the Goon Squad, won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Times book prize, and was named one of the best books of the decade by Time Magazine and Entertainment Weekly. Also a journalist, she has written frequently in the New York Times Magazine, and she recently completed a term as President of PEN America. Her new novel, The Candy House, a sibling to A Visit From the Goon Squad, was published in April, 2022, and was recently named one of the New York Times’s 10 Best Books of 2022, as well as one of President Obama’s favorite reads of 2022.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 200 reviews
April 21, 2018
I love reading the annual Best American Short Stories anthologies.
They’re a great way to keep up with current writing, see what your favourite authors are up to and discover new ones who are publishing in little magazines and journals.
Inclusion in the book can be a huge boost to a young or emerging writer’s career. I remember reading an interview with the great Raymond Carver in which he said he was so excited with his first BASS publication in the late 1960s that he took the volume to bed with him. I think I first read Kent Haruf in BASS; ditto Rebecca Makkai and Akhil Sharma and Gish Jen.
I’ve always found the quality consistently high. Each year the series’ editor chooses a guest editor who looks at 120 stories (already culled from hundreds) and then chooses 20. Bylines are blacked out to avoid prejudice, although most would recognize a publication like say, The New Yorker or Harper’s because of the layout. But there’s usually a wide range of styles and voices.
2014’s volume is edited by Jennifer Egan, and judging by the selections it was a very good year. It took me a long time to finish – over half a year, in fact. I’d read one or two stories at a time, put the book down and take it up again weeks or even months later. Incredibly, even with this strange way of reading (I’m like that with books of unrelated stories) many of the pieces still stay with me. Which says something about their quality.
Among my favourites are:
David Gates’s “A Hand Reached Down To Guide Me,” a sad and soulful tale about a writer and part-time musician’s ambivalent relationship with a bluegrass musician who never really made it big. It deals with mortality, the shifting nature of love and friendship and how expectations readjust themselves in middle and old age.
Ann Beattie deals with similar terrain in “The Indian Uprising” (an homage to the famous Donald Barthelme story?), in which a woman visits her frail and debilitated former writing teacher in wintry New York City, and runs into her ex-husband at the same restaurant. (Fun fact: Beattie was once married to Gates!)
Nell Freudenberger’s “Hover” is about a wife and mother who discovers she has the power to float off the ground a few weeks after separating from her husband. Freudenberger gets the realistic details just right, with a touch of magic realism and a central metaphor that's never reductive or simplistic.
Lauren Groff (Arcadia, the forthcoming Fates And Furies) is swiftly becoming a writer to watch. And based on her story “At The Round Earth’s Imagined Corners,” I’d seek out anything by her. It’s a fascinating, beautifully detailed story about a dysfunctional Florida family who live in a home in a swamp right next to a university. Like Alice Munro, Groff compresses an entire lifetime into a couple dozen pages. The story’s full of snakes and ghosts, and it’ll haunt you.
Joyce Carol Oates’s “Mastiff” will also haunt you. Two unnamed middle-aged people go hiking – they’re dating but not quite a couple – and while the woman muses about petty things like how she hasn’t dressed appropriately for the outing, or brought enough water, even though the man warned her to do so, they encounter an enormous dog. An event changes their lives forever.
Joshua Ferris’s “The Breeze” also looks at a relationship in peril, and uses a fascinating series of alternate scenes to suggest whether or not it will last. This is must reading for anyone who’s had a “I don’t know… what do you want to do?” conversation with a date or partner.
One of the oddest stories is “Next To Nothing,” by Stephen O’Connor, a writer I’ve never heard of before. It takes an episodic look at the lives of two chillingly rational sisters over decades. In one section they’re girls playing hide-and-seek, in another they’re both sociologists and telling their children stories, and in yet another they’re getting supplies for a hurricane. With his coolly detached tone, O’Connor surprises you with where he goes. The climax is riveting, not something you can say about a lot of short fiction.
Siblings also figure in Laura van den Berg’s “Antarctica,” the story that closes the volume (it’s arranged alphabetically by the author’s name). The effective setting for this tale is the barren landscape of the Antarctica, where the narrator’s estranged brother has been killed in an explosion. She’s come looking for answers. In a couple dozen pages, van den Berg gives you lots to ponder, including a great big secret between the siblings. Would the revelation of the secret have saved the brother? We – and she – will never know. But thinking about it is absolutely absorbing.
There are other stories that impressed me: Nicole Cullen’s “Long Tom Lookout,” about how a woman and the son of her husband’s affair with another woman go to work at a fire lookout station; I was blown away by the voice and the incredible muscular prose of Craig Davidson’s “Medium Tough”; I recall liking stories by Charles Baxter, T.C. Boyle and Peter Cameron. I look forward to rereading them – in proper context – in their future books.
Perhaps next time I go through an entire BASS volume I’ll write my thoughts down after reading each story. In the meantime, I’ve got a whole list of new writers to follow. Which is a very good thing.
They’re a great way to keep up with current writing, see what your favourite authors are up to and discover new ones who are publishing in little magazines and journals.
Inclusion in the book can be a huge boost to a young or emerging writer’s career. I remember reading an interview with the great Raymond Carver in which he said he was so excited with his first BASS publication in the late 1960s that he took the volume to bed with him. I think I first read Kent Haruf in BASS; ditto Rebecca Makkai and Akhil Sharma and Gish Jen.
I’ve always found the quality consistently high. Each year the series’ editor chooses a guest editor who looks at 120 stories (already culled from hundreds) and then chooses 20. Bylines are blacked out to avoid prejudice, although most would recognize a publication like say, The New Yorker or Harper’s because of the layout. But there’s usually a wide range of styles and voices.
2014’s volume is edited by Jennifer Egan, and judging by the selections it was a very good year. It took me a long time to finish – over half a year, in fact. I’d read one or two stories at a time, put the book down and take it up again weeks or even months later. Incredibly, even with this strange way of reading (I’m like that with books of unrelated stories) many of the pieces still stay with me. Which says something about their quality.
Among my favourites are:
David Gates’s “A Hand Reached Down To Guide Me,” a sad and soulful tale about a writer and part-time musician’s ambivalent relationship with a bluegrass musician who never really made it big. It deals with mortality, the shifting nature of love and friendship and how expectations readjust themselves in middle and old age.
Ann Beattie deals with similar terrain in “The Indian Uprising” (an homage to the famous Donald Barthelme story?), in which a woman visits her frail and debilitated former writing teacher in wintry New York City, and runs into her ex-husband at the same restaurant. (Fun fact: Beattie was once married to Gates!)
Nell Freudenberger’s “Hover” is about a wife and mother who discovers she has the power to float off the ground a few weeks after separating from her husband. Freudenberger gets the realistic details just right, with a touch of magic realism and a central metaphor that's never reductive or simplistic.
Lauren Groff (Arcadia, the forthcoming Fates And Furies) is swiftly becoming a writer to watch. And based on her story “At The Round Earth’s Imagined Corners,” I’d seek out anything by her. It’s a fascinating, beautifully detailed story about a dysfunctional Florida family who live in a home in a swamp right next to a university. Like Alice Munro, Groff compresses an entire lifetime into a couple dozen pages. The story’s full of snakes and ghosts, and it’ll haunt you.
Joyce Carol Oates’s “Mastiff” will also haunt you. Two unnamed middle-aged people go hiking – they’re dating but not quite a couple – and while the woman muses about petty things like how she hasn’t dressed appropriately for the outing, or brought enough water, even though the man warned her to do so, they encounter an enormous dog. An event changes their lives forever.
Joshua Ferris’s “The Breeze” also looks at a relationship in peril, and uses a fascinating series of alternate scenes to suggest whether or not it will last. This is must reading for anyone who’s had a “I don’t know… what do you want to do?” conversation with a date or partner.
One of the oddest stories is “Next To Nothing,” by Stephen O’Connor, a writer I’ve never heard of before. It takes an episodic look at the lives of two chillingly rational sisters over decades. In one section they’re girls playing hide-and-seek, in another they’re both sociologists and telling their children stories, and in yet another they’re getting supplies for a hurricane. With his coolly detached tone, O’Connor surprises you with where he goes. The climax is riveting, not something you can say about a lot of short fiction.
Siblings also figure in Laura van den Berg’s “Antarctica,” the story that closes the volume (it’s arranged alphabetically by the author’s name). The effective setting for this tale is the barren landscape of the Antarctica, where the narrator’s estranged brother has been killed in an explosion. She’s come looking for answers. In a couple dozen pages, van den Berg gives you lots to ponder, including a great big secret between the siblings. Would the revelation of the secret have saved the brother? We – and she – will never know. But thinking about it is absolutely absorbing.
There are other stories that impressed me: Nicole Cullen’s “Long Tom Lookout,” about how a woman and the son of her husband’s affair with another woman go to work at a fire lookout station; I was blown away by the voice and the incredible muscular prose of Craig Davidson’s “Medium Tough”; I recall liking stories by Charles Baxter, T.C. Boyle and Peter Cameron. I look forward to rereading them – in proper context – in their future books.
Perhaps next time I go through an entire BASS volume I’ll write my thoughts down after reading each story. In the meantime, I’ve got a whole list of new writers to follow. Which is a very good thing.
November 3, 2014
This collection of short stories has some very good work in it and some stories that were difficult to get through because they were either boring or poorly written. I am not a great fan of Jennifer Egan's writing and, since she is this year's editor, that may be why the collection did not resonate very well with me.
There is one story included that makes the whole book worthwhile. It is entitled 'Long Tom Lookout' and is by Nicole Cullen, a writer new to my radar. There is a lot going on in this story. The gist of it is that a woman is looking for her errant husband from whom she is separated. He is not to be found but she steals his pick-up truck and a five year-old child he had with another woman (who is now in jail for drug addiction). The child appears to be autistic. He barely speaks except to repeat words, and is fascinated with maps. She drives from New Orleans to Idaho and there secures a job at a remote site as a fire sighter. The story is about the relationship of the woman and the child, along with her attempts to try and understand herself and him, and come to terms with the dissolution of the marriage. The story's power lies with what is implied but not directly stated. It takes a writer with real chops to create a short story that stays with the reader without fading in its beauty. Ms. Cullen succeeds in doing this.
'Charity', by Charles Baxter, starts off with a bang. It goes from Ethiopia to Minnesota in one page. A relationship quickly dissembles when one of the couple finds himself in such pain that he resorts to addiction in order to deal with his horrific situation. The end of the story disappointed me. I expected a better resolution.
I enjoyed T.C. Boyle's story, 'The Night of the Satellite. The message I got from his writing is that random occurrences can be met with either tragedy or open-ended joy and surprise.
Peter Cameron's 'After the Flood' is one of the stronger stories. A couple is asked by their minister to take in a family whose house is destroyed by a flood. For six days, they take in three strangers and many painful things about their past come to the surface.
I found Craig Davidson's story, 'Medium Tough', one of the strangest ones I've read. A man is born, seemingly of two halves, one strong and one bony and weak; one testosterone loaded and the other needing regular doses of male hormones to survive. He is a pediatric surgeon whose parents were both alcoholic when he was in utero. He deals with the results of his own deformities by doing delicate surgeries on children at most risk.
David Gates's story, 'A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me', is very poignant. A musician and his wife take in a terminally ill friend and let him die in their home.
Though I've been a fan of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, her story in this collection disappointed me. 'A Judges Will' seemed quite simplistic as it dealt with a woman who finds out that her dying spouse has had a mistress for the past 25 years. What impact will this have on his will?
In 'Mastiff', Joyce Carol Oates does not disappoint. A woman, lonely and self-absorbed, goes hiking with her older lover. She fantasizes about their relationship despite actually feeling very little. Ultimately, she is attacked by a giant mastiff she'd seen at the beginning of their hike and her lover defends her. Should she feel more for him now?
I found some of the stories ridiculous, some trivial, some good, and one brilliant. Perhaps, this is a good outcome for this collection. Triviality abounds, goodness comes infrequently and one is lucky to find brilliance in writing at all.
There is one story included that makes the whole book worthwhile. It is entitled 'Long Tom Lookout' and is by Nicole Cullen, a writer new to my radar. There is a lot going on in this story. The gist of it is that a woman is looking for her errant husband from whom she is separated. He is not to be found but she steals his pick-up truck and a five year-old child he had with another woman (who is now in jail for drug addiction). The child appears to be autistic. He barely speaks except to repeat words, and is fascinated with maps. She drives from New Orleans to Idaho and there secures a job at a remote site as a fire sighter. The story is about the relationship of the woman and the child, along with her attempts to try and understand herself and him, and come to terms with the dissolution of the marriage. The story's power lies with what is implied but not directly stated. It takes a writer with real chops to create a short story that stays with the reader without fading in its beauty. Ms. Cullen succeeds in doing this.
'Charity', by Charles Baxter, starts off with a bang. It goes from Ethiopia to Minnesota in one page. A relationship quickly dissembles when one of the couple finds himself in such pain that he resorts to addiction in order to deal with his horrific situation. The end of the story disappointed me. I expected a better resolution.
I enjoyed T.C. Boyle's story, 'The Night of the Satellite. The message I got from his writing is that random occurrences can be met with either tragedy or open-ended joy and surprise.
Peter Cameron's 'After the Flood' is one of the stronger stories. A couple is asked by their minister to take in a family whose house is destroyed by a flood. For six days, they take in three strangers and many painful things about their past come to the surface.
I found Craig Davidson's story, 'Medium Tough', one of the strangest ones I've read. A man is born, seemingly of two halves, one strong and one bony and weak; one testosterone loaded and the other needing regular doses of male hormones to survive. He is a pediatric surgeon whose parents were both alcoholic when he was in utero. He deals with the results of his own deformities by doing delicate surgeries on children at most risk.
David Gates's story, 'A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me', is very poignant. A musician and his wife take in a terminally ill friend and let him die in their home.
Though I've been a fan of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, her story in this collection disappointed me. 'A Judges Will' seemed quite simplistic as it dealt with a woman who finds out that her dying spouse has had a mistress for the past 25 years. What impact will this have on his will?
In 'Mastiff', Joyce Carol Oates does not disappoint. A woman, lonely and self-absorbed, goes hiking with her older lover. She fantasizes about their relationship despite actually feeling very little. Ultimately, she is attacked by a giant mastiff she'd seen at the beginning of their hike and her lover defends her. Should she feel more for him now?
I found some of the stories ridiculous, some trivial, some good, and one brilliant. Perhaps, this is a good outcome for this collection. Triviality abounds, goodness comes infrequently and one is lucky to find brilliance in writing at all.
November 6, 2014
The Best American Short Stories series uses a different guest editor each year, so there's some significant variation from year to year in the sort of stories that are selected for the volume. This year's guest editor was Jennifer Egan, and by my tastes she did a great job, with excellent stories far outweighing the ones I found lacking.
Below are my mini-reviews of all the stories in the anthology.
In "Charity" by Charles Baxter, a gay man doing volunteer work in Ethiopia returns home with a debilitating illness and becomes addicted to painkillers. His former lover tracks him down and gets him back on his feet, although in the process he realizes they are no longer in love. The story is moving and beautifully crafted.
"The Indian Uprising" by Ann Beattie is a portrait of a woman's relationship with an aged man who was once her college professor. Beattie's stories can be difficult; in just a few pages they sometimes introduce a flurry of characters, past and present events, and details of setting that might seem jumbled and structureless. And often her stories end with that "where ya goin' with all this?" question still hanging in the air, at least for readers looking for straightforward plot resolution. But I found this piece to be a wonderful example of the sort of beauty to be found in her best stories. That beauty is not in its dynamics, its motion of plot or arc of character, but simply as something that rests quietly on the page like a work of art.
"The Night of the Satellite" by T.C. Boyle was one of the few stories in this book that I didn't care for at all. It's little more than a detailed description of an uninteresting and rather dimwitted couple having an uninteresting and dimwitted argument. Some heavy-handed symbolism falling out of the sky at the end doesn't improve things.
"After the Flood" by Peter Cameron continues the theme of drab, not-too-bright characters. I didn't find this story as unequivocally pointless as T.C. Boyle's, but neither was it particularly compelling or interesting.
In "Long Tom Lookout" by Nicole Cullen, a woman is unexpectedly given custody of her husband's illegitimate child -- a boy with autism-spectrum symptoms. This is a finely crafted story, but a little too relentlessly grim and humorless for my taste.
"Medium Tough" by Craig Davidson is a remarkable story; gritty, bizarre, and indeed -- tough. Many will find its graphic operating room gore too disturbing to be enjoyable, and I can't blame them. The story made an impact on me, but I'm ambivalent about seeking out more by this author.
"The Breeze" by Joshua Ferris is something of a Groundhog Day meets Waiting for Godot. A married couple are taken through several variations of the same night, most of them leading to miscommunication and quarrels. An interesting notion, but the endless repetitions of "What do you want to do?" "I don't care. What do you want to do?" discussions became rather tedious.
"Hover" by Nell Freudenberger is a nice, well-done story about a mother going through a divorce, with a bit of fantasy dropped in.
"A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me" by David Gates is a beautiful story about friendship, life and death. I found it pretty amazing that a short story could give as much of a feeling of time -- of the course of a life -- as this one does. The story is quiet but deeply moving, and one of the best in the anthology.
"At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners" by Lauren Groff is similar to the above story in how it manages to encompass many decades of a lifetime within a short story. I didn't find this piece quite as unified and compelling as David Gates' but still it's an impressive and beautiful piece of work.
"The Judge's Will" by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala is a low-key story of a middle aged Indian woman, unhappy in her marriage, dealing with the knowledge that her ailing husband has a mistress. None of the characters is likable and the story has no clear-cut resolution, but still it's artful and interesting.
"Evie M." by O. A. Lindsey may be the most "experimental" story in this anthology, chronicling the life of a low-level office worker with microscopic attention to the most mundane details. My first reaction was rather disdainful, but the author's comments at the back of the book gave the story a context that made it more interesting.
"Kattekoppen" by Will Mackin is a story taking place in the Afghan war. There's an element of unreality, or perhaps detachment-from-reality, which feels entirely appropriate to a war story. I found the style of the story reminiscent of Tim O'Brien's classic The Things They Carried.
"This is Not a Love Song" by Brendan Mathews tells the story of a briefly successful "post-punk pop" singer of the early 90s, told from the point of view of her best friend. The story is deeply felt, convincing in its realism, and includes some of the most beautiful writing in the anthology.
In "La Pulchra Nota" by Molly McNett the narrator is a 14th century music teacher, and the story feels very authentic in its portrayal of a person from that time. It also tells a dark and unhappy story with great effectiveness.
"God" by Benjamin Nugent is a funny and ultimately sad story of a college fraternity's playfully exaggerated regard for a particular co-ed, nicknamed "God." This may be one of the more lightweight stories in this book, but still it's a respectable work.
"Mastiff" by Joyce Carol Oats is an excellent example of Oats' brand of literary-fiction-meets-horror-fiction, and its artistry is undeniable. But as with much of what I've read of her work, this story is just too bloodthirsty for my taste, and the artistry wasn't enough to make it enjoyable for me.
"Next to Nothing" by Stephen O'Connor is an odd story, following the lives of two sisters who are portrayed as devoid of virtually all human feelings. These unrealistic and unsympathetic characters deprive the story of any impact it might have had, and I was left wondering what the point of it was.
"Madame Bovary's Greyhound" by Karen Russell is about exactly what the title says, and is a charming, delightful story. Russell is a wonderful writer whose sentences often blaze with absolute genius; two examples: "Under glassy bathwater, Emma's bare body as still and bright as quartz in a quarry, she let the hours fill her nostrils with the terrible serenity of a drowned woman." And: "Herons sailed over her head, their broad wings flat as palms, stroking her from scalp to tail at an immense distance--a remote benediction--and the dog's mind became empty and smooth."
"Antarctica" by Laura van den Berg is a rare thing in literary fiction: an addictive page-turner that sucks you into its plot and doesn't let go. And yet at the same time it manages to be melancholy and deliberately measured in pace. This was one of my favorite stories in the book, and van den Berg is an author I'll be seeking out in the future.
All in all, the best stories in this anthology more than made up for the weaker ones, and I consider this an excellent year for the series.
Below are my mini-reviews of all the stories in the anthology.
In "Charity" by Charles Baxter, a gay man doing volunteer work in Ethiopia returns home with a debilitating illness and becomes addicted to painkillers. His former lover tracks him down and gets him back on his feet, although in the process he realizes they are no longer in love. The story is moving and beautifully crafted.
"The Indian Uprising" by Ann Beattie is a portrait of a woman's relationship with an aged man who was once her college professor. Beattie's stories can be difficult; in just a few pages they sometimes introduce a flurry of characters, past and present events, and details of setting that might seem jumbled and structureless. And often her stories end with that "where ya goin' with all this?" question still hanging in the air, at least for readers looking for straightforward plot resolution. But I found this piece to be a wonderful example of the sort of beauty to be found in her best stories. That beauty is not in its dynamics, its motion of plot or arc of character, but simply as something that rests quietly on the page like a work of art.
"The Night of the Satellite" by T.C. Boyle was one of the few stories in this book that I didn't care for at all. It's little more than a detailed description of an uninteresting and rather dimwitted couple having an uninteresting and dimwitted argument. Some heavy-handed symbolism falling out of the sky at the end doesn't improve things.
"After the Flood" by Peter Cameron continues the theme of drab, not-too-bright characters. I didn't find this story as unequivocally pointless as T.C. Boyle's, but neither was it particularly compelling or interesting.
In "Long Tom Lookout" by Nicole Cullen, a woman is unexpectedly given custody of her husband's illegitimate child -- a boy with autism-spectrum symptoms. This is a finely crafted story, but a little too relentlessly grim and humorless for my taste.
"Medium Tough" by Craig Davidson is a remarkable story; gritty, bizarre, and indeed -- tough. Many will find its graphic operating room gore too disturbing to be enjoyable, and I can't blame them. The story made an impact on me, but I'm ambivalent about seeking out more by this author.
"The Breeze" by Joshua Ferris is something of a Groundhog Day meets Waiting for Godot. A married couple are taken through several variations of the same night, most of them leading to miscommunication and quarrels. An interesting notion, but the endless repetitions of "What do you want to do?" "I don't care. What do you want to do?" discussions became rather tedious.
"Hover" by Nell Freudenberger is a nice, well-done story about a mother going through a divorce, with a bit of fantasy dropped in.
"A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me" by David Gates is a beautiful story about friendship, life and death. I found it pretty amazing that a short story could give as much of a feeling of time -- of the course of a life -- as this one does. The story is quiet but deeply moving, and one of the best in the anthology.
"At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners" by Lauren Groff is similar to the above story in how it manages to encompass many decades of a lifetime within a short story. I didn't find this piece quite as unified and compelling as David Gates' but still it's an impressive and beautiful piece of work.
"The Judge's Will" by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala is a low-key story of a middle aged Indian woman, unhappy in her marriage, dealing with the knowledge that her ailing husband has a mistress. None of the characters is likable and the story has no clear-cut resolution, but still it's artful and interesting.
"Evie M." by O. A. Lindsey may be the most "experimental" story in this anthology, chronicling the life of a low-level office worker with microscopic attention to the most mundane details. My first reaction was rather disdainful, but the author's comments at the back of the book gave the story a context that made it more interesting.
"Kattekoppen" by Will Mackin is a story taking place in the Afghan war. There's an element of unreality, or perhaps detachment-from-reality, which feels entirely appropriate to a war story. I found the style of the story reminiscent of Tim O'Brien's classic The Things They Carried.
"This is Not a Love Song" by Brendan Mathews tells the story of a briefly successful "post-punk pop" singer of the early 90s, told from the point of view of her best friend. The story is deeply felt, convincing in its realism, and includes some of the most beautiful writing in the anthology.
In "La Pulchra Nota" by Molly McNett the narrator is a 14th century music teacher, and the story feels very authentic in its portrayal of a person from that time. It also tells a dark and unhappy story with great effectiveness.
"God" by Benjamin Nugent is a funny and ultimately sad story of a college fraternity's playfully exaggerated regard for a particular co-ed, nicknamed "God." This may be one of the more lightweight stories in this book, but still it's a respectable work.
"Mastiff" by Joyce Carol Oats is an excellent example of Oats' brand of literary-fiction-meets-horror-fiction, and its artistry is undeniable. But as with much of what I've read of her work, this story is just too bloodthirsty for my taste, and the artistry wasn't enough to make it enjoyable for me.
"Next to Nothing" by Stephen O'Connor is an odd story, following the lives of two sisters who are portrayed as devoid of virtually all human feelings. These unrealistic and unsympathetic characters deprive the story of any impact it might have had, and I was left wondering what the point of it was.
"Madame Bovary's Greyhound" by Karen Russell is about exactly what the title says, and is a charming, delightful story. Russell is a wonderful writer whose sentences often blaze with absolute genius; two examples: "Under glassy bathwater, Emma's bare body as still and bright as quartz in a quarry, she let the hours fill her nostrils with the terrible serenity of a drowned woman." And: "Herons sailed over her head, their broad wings flat as palms, stroking her from scalp to tail at an immense distance--a remote benediction--and the dog's mind became empty and smooth."
"Antarctica" by Laura van den Berg is a rare thing in literary fiction: an addictive page-turner that sucks you into its plot and doesn't let go. And yet at the same time it manages to be melancholy and deliberately measured in pace. This was one of my favorite stories in the book, and van den Berg is an author I'll be seeking out in the future.
All in all, the best stories in this anthology more than made up for the weaker ones, and I consider this an excellent year for the series.
November 5, 2014
My thanks to NetGalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for an eARC of this book to read and review.
If this is the best America can offer, we're doomed. Or I have a shot at becoming the best short story writer this country has seen in a year at the least. So yes, we're pretty much doomed.
I made it about 91 pages into this book when I realized that the running theme of the book this year was "let's-see-if-we-can-make-the-reader/s-attempt-suicide". I am not making light of suicide, it is a very sad and tragic thing, but this book did it's best to push those who were teetering on the edge into a swan dive off of the cliff, if only to escape this book.
It's dark. Apparently, we can only deal with cheating, dead, fighting or missing loved ones. Yes, yes, I know. You have to have conflict in a story or the story is boring. I agree, however, the endings can't all be so depressing I want to put the book down permanently. Which is what I did. I have learned the hard way by sticking with short story collections that if the first few stories are rotten, the rest of the stories, despite being written by different people, were all approved by the same one, the editor. I do not share this particular editor's tastes. I try to be very particular about the compilations that I read. If you want a good set of editors, Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling are amazing. I will read anything they put out, together or separately.
If you like depressing realism, this book is for you. If you like to read to escape reality, skip this one.
If this is the best America can offer, we're doomed. Or I have a shot at becoming the best short story writer this country has seen in a year at the least. So yes, we're pretty much doomed.
I made it about 91 pages into this book when I realized that the running theme of the book this year was "let's-see-if-we-can-make-the-reader/s-attempt-suicide". I am not making light of suicide, it is a very sad and tragic thing, but this book did it's best to push those who were teetering on the edge into a swan dive off of the cliff, if only to escape this book.
It's dark. Apparently, we can only deal with cheating, dead, fighting or missing loved ones. Yes, yes, I know. You have to have conflict in a story or the story is boring. I agree, however, the endings can't all be so depressing I want to put the book down permanently. Which is what I did. I have learned the hard way by sticking with short story collections that if the first few stories are rotten, the rest of the stories, despite being written by different people, were all approved by the same one, the editor. I do not share this particular editor's tastes. I try to be very particular about the compilations that I read. If you want a good set of editors, Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling are amazing. I will read anything they put out, together or separately.
If you like depressing realism, this book is for you. If you like to read to escape reality, skip this one.
April 10, 2015
The reviews suggesting that this particular volume of the "Best American" series is dark and sad and maybe even (gasp!) depressing are onto something. Death and decay factor into nearly every single story here. And this is a GREAT THING, if you ask me. I doubt this thematic consistency was intentional on Egan's part, though it is clear from her introduction that she is a firm believer in fiction's ability to do important things. In 2014, death is still a very, very hard thing to talk about-- in fact, there is a whole lot of entertainment that seems designed to make you forget about it. So it figures that Egan would choose these stories, which attempt to deal with issues that really no other form of storytelling can deal with. The success rate varies, of course-- for example, it took me forever to get into Beattie's "Indian Uprising," and I don't think it was finally worth the struggle-- but some of these things really, really cook: Charles Baxter's "Charity" is both savage and sympathetic, Peter Cameron's "After the Flood" has some surprising laughs, given its kinda dank subject matter, Benjamin Nugent's "God" captures the "frat aesthetic" perfectly and then turns it into something profound, Craig Davidson's "Medium Tough" is practically Lovecraftian, and Ruth P. Jhabvala's "The Judge's Will" distills a complex relationship into just a few emotionally wrought, weirdly funny pages. All in all, it's a nice collection of solid stories about messy topics. Oh... BEFORE I GO: I must give a special shout-out to two stories in particular... Will Mackin's "Kattekoppen" gets props for the single most arresting image of the book (it involves a bombing, and sand) and Nicole Cullen's "Long Tom Lookout" is the most unassumingly haunting story here, its plain prose concealing a totally wicked meditation on care. Yeah!
September 19, 2018
I liked earlier collections of this series and discovered some great new voices, but it is clear that the editors of this volume and I do not share the same taste. There are quite a few stories here that I do not care for at all and there is not a single one that I would call excellent.
May 25, 2017
A solid collection of short stories, most of which either have no resolution or are utterly depressing, or both. Standouts for me were Nell Freudenberger’s Hover, about a mother going through a period of dissociative episodes; Nicole Cullen’s Long Tom Lookout, about a woman stealing her husband’s child into the Idaho mountains and her own past; and Brendan Mathews’s This Is Not a Love Song, about a shooting-star musician and her friend and photographer.
April 20, 2015
Along with drinking too much, walking on the beach and teetering along the fault lines of family relationships, reading Best American Short Stories (AKA BASS) is my much-loved Christmas tradition. Every year I kid myself that I will do what at least one reviewer does and read only one story each day – like a gorgeous prolonged literary Advent calendar. But every year I dive into this book and eat it up fast.
So, 2014 – edited by Jennifer Egan, whose book (A Visit from the Goon Squad) was a great fave of mine a couple of years ago. In her introduction, she outlines her criteria for selection – which includes ““If there was a single factor that decided whether a story ended up in my ongoing pile of contenders, it was its basic power to make me lose my bearings, to envelop me in a fictional world.” Other criteria included: freshness and specificity of language, an unpredictable turn in the plot’s movement, and an awareness of layers. “I wanted to see if there was more to the story than was directly being told, and that there were multiple histories in the air without explanation.”
Egan was also looking for some stories which had some “engagement with our moment” – which would be the reason for including two indifferent stories set in contemporary American combat zones.
Most years there will be three or four stand-out stories that just knock me out and propel me to read more of that writers work. Last year (I think) it was Louise Ehrlich and George Saunders amongst others whose work I tracked down. This year, while I will follow up several writers, I have to agree with this reviewer who wrote “All are serviceable, none bad, but few of the stories are true tours de force, with one notable exception being Lauren Groff’s “At the Round Earth’s Imagined Corners,” the key word being the penultimate one, and Laura van den Berg’s odd, pensive “Antarctica” and its utterly memorable closing line—fittingly, and artfully, the last in the collection.” (https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-re...) (The last line of Antartica – for those interested, reads as: “I did not know if one day I would disappear and no one except a missing woman and a dead man would be able to tell the people who loved me why.” It is memorable in the context of this fine story.) Lauren Goff’s story is a lesson to any aspiring writer about how to fit a man’s life into one short story.
I also liked ‘God’, unlike one other reviewer, Charles May, who wrote about it this way:“The first sentence sums up the story: "He called her God because she wrote a poem about how Caleb Newton ejaculated prematurely the night she slept with him, and because she shared the poem with her friends." If you were in a college fraternity, you may appreciate this story. I was not.” (http://may-on-the-short-story.blogspo...) Maybe I am a fratboy at heart. Charles May writes about this anthology every year and is always worth a read as well.
So, am I off BASS forever? No – still enjoyable and a great lead into some quality American writing.
So, 2014 – edited by Jennifer Egan, whose book (A Visit from the Goon Squad) was a great fave of mine a couple of years ago. In her introduction, she outlines her criteria for selection – which includes ““If there was a single factor that decided whether a story ended up in my ongoing pile of contenders, it was its basic power to make me lose my bearings, to envelop me in a fictional world.” Other criteria included: freshness and specificity of language, an unpredictable turn in the plot’s movement, and an awareness of layers. “I wanted to see if there was more to the story than was directly being told, and that there were multiple histories in the air without explanation.”
Egan was also looking for some stories which had some “engagement with our moment” – which would be the reason for including two indifferent stories set in contemporary American combat zones.
Most years there will be three or four stand-out stories that just knock me out and propel me to read more of that writers work. Last year (I think) it was Louise Ehrlich and George Saunders amongst others whose work I tracked down. This year, while I will follow up several writers, I have to agree with this reviewer who wrote “All are serviceable, none bad, but few of the stories are true tours de force, with one notable exception being Lauren Groff’s “At the Round Earth’s Imagined Corners,” the key word being the penultimate one, and Laura van den Berg’s odd, pensive “Antarctica” and its utterly memorable closing line—fittingly, and artfully, the last in the collection.” (https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-re...) (The last line of Antartica – for those interested, reads as: “I did not know if one day I would disappear and no one except a missing woman and a dead man would be able to tell the people who loved me why.” It is memorable in the context of this fine story.) Lauren Goff’s story is a lesson to any aspiring writer about how to fit a man’s life into one short story.
I also liked ‘God’, unlike one other reviewer, Charles May, who wrote about it this way:“The first sentence sums up the story: "He called her God because she wrote a poem about how Caleb Newton ejaculated prematurely the night she slept with him, and because she shared the poem with her friends." If you were in a college fraternity, you may appreciate this story. I was not.” (http://may-on-the-short-story.blogspo...) Maybe I am a fratboy at heart. Charles May writes about this anthology every year and is always worth a read as well.
So, am I off BASS forever? No – still enjoyable and a great lead into some quality American writing.
October 22, 2017
For the most part this collection grabbed me from the first story and wouldn't let go. I subtracted a star because one story left me completely baffled.
November 7, 2014
I've read this series long enough to know that the selections are usually going to be very well-written stories by authors performing at their peak form. Often I've followed up by reading a collection of stories by an author with a great story in one of these anthologies but almost every time the one story I encountered in the anthology was far better than the rest in the author's collection. The fun of reading stories like these is that in spite of huge differences in style, characterization, plot and theme in the stories, the one consistent factor is great writing.
This is the best anthology in this series in 10 years. The first 2 stories are strong then the next 5 or so are truly outstanding. The Night of the Satellite was TC Boyle’s story about a couple that argued a lot in a spacy way that was symbolized by the guy getting hit by a satellite fragment, which is not much of a plot but the writing was super. After the Flood was Peter Cameron’s story of a spacy lady who lets Pastor Judy talk her into taking a Slavic family into her home when they lose theirs. The lady wants to be good but has no empathy for others, for some good reasons. Nicole Cullen’s story Long Tom Lookout was about a woman who takes her autistic 5-year old stepson to Idaho because she thinks her husband is cheating on her. The Breeze (Joshua Ferris) was the best story I’ve read all year as it perfectly describes a woman and her many moods. She feels a breeze, the first of spring, while waiting at home for her husband’s return so they could go out on the town for the night. Ferris makes every possibility in her imagination come true – and none of them as well.
This is the best anthology in this series in 10 years. The first 2 stories are strong then the next 5 or so are truly outstanding. The Night of the Satellite was TC Boyle’s story about a couple that argued a lot in a spacy way that was symbolized by the guy getting hit by a satellite fragment, which is not much of a plot but the writing was super. After the Flood was Peter Cameron’s story of a spacy lady who lets Pastor Judy talk her into taking a Slavic family into her home when they lose theirs. The lady wants to be good but has no empathy for others, for some good reasons. Nicole Cullen’s story Long Tom Lookout was about a woman who takes her autistic 5-year old stepson to Idaho because she thinks her husband is cheating on her. The Breeze (Joshua Ferris) was the best story I’ve read all year as it perfectly describes a woman and her many moods. She feels a breeze, the first of spring, while waiting at home for her husband’s return so they could go out on the town for the night. Ferris makes every possibility in her imagination come true – and none of them as well.
January 15, 2015
I read a lot of short story collections. For one reason, short story collections are easier to read in short bursts. It always takes me a second to pick up a novel at some random stopping point and remember where in the narrative I am, whereas short stories are self-contained. For another reason, I think it is a real skill to distill a plot and characters into the confines of a short story. My problem with many short story collections is that they tend to be mixed bags – handfuls of outstanding stories and then additional stories of varying quality. This collection, however, is not a mixed bag. Egan has chosen some great stories. It’s hard to pick bad stories if you are choosing authors like Charles Baxter, Ann Beattie, T.C. Boyle, Joyce Carol Oates, and Joshua Ferris, so maybe you can criticize her choice of including so many accomplished authors. At the same time, as accomplished authors, they write great short stories that are likely among the best-written stories of that year. There is a good variety of story plots (Mother and her husband’s illegitimate child, couples with relationship issues, unrequited love, a dying teacher and a former student, among many others), although I did notice a similarity across these stories of brokenness in relationships, with plot events that advance or reflect these relationships’ issues without resolving anything (very Raymond Carver-esque, these stories). My favorite stories were “The Night of the Satellite,” “The Breeze,” and “This is Not a Love Song.” The only story I didn’t care for was “Madame Bovary’s Greyhound.” Overall, solid collection of stories. Recommended.
December 27, 2015
My husband has been giving me a copy of this short story anthology for Christmas every year since 1990.(Wow! 25 years of the same gift...we are predictable and faithful to our traditions). It's the book that sits on my bedside table throughout the year. I pick it up and read a story or two when I've just finished a big, meaty novel, but don't feel ready to dive into another. I take it with me on vacations as my "back up read" in case whatever novel I've brought doesn't pan out, and finally I spend a little time towards the end of the year to finish it up. How much I enjoy the stories depends so much on the editor. I was really looking forward to Jennifer Egan's picks since I loved her "A Visit from the Goon Squad" so much, but I suppose just because I love her writing, doesn't mean we have the same taste in literature. There are stories from other years that will stay with me forever (I think it was "In the Gloaming" from one of the collections in the early 1990s that got me hooked on this series, and I go back and read it regularly), but honestly, I don't think I'll remember any of the stories from this edition past New Years Day. Oh well...the good news is that I have the 2015 edition under the Christmas tree with an untracked spine, ready for me to dig in and find new favourite writers and stories.
January 7, 2015
This year's Best American Short Stories is a fairly solid collection, but I have to admit, it struck me as a little too monoculture. I would have liked to see a greater assortment of stories from non-white authors. I have to admit, too, that I'm getting a bit weary of New York stories about failed relationships, and there is an example of just such a story here. Even when well written, as this one is, they feel far too familiar. Those critiques aside, several stories here rocked my socks.
My absolute favorites this year: Peter Cameron's "After the Flood" (Subtropics), Craig Davidson's "Medium Tough" (Agni), and Molly McNett's "La Pulchra Nota" (Image).
Nicole Cullen's "Long Tom Lookout" (Idaho Review), Lauren Groff's "At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners" (Five Points), Joyce Carol Oates's "Mastiff" (New Yorker), and Laura Van Den Berg's "Antarctica" (Glimmer Train) were also very strong indeed.
My absolute favorites this year: Peter Cameron's "After the Flood" (Subtropics), Craig Davidson's "Medium Tough" (Agni), and Molly McNett's "La Pulchra Nota" (Image).
Nicole Cullen's "Long Tom Lookout" (Idaho Review), Lauren Groff's "At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners" (Five Points), Joyce Carol Oates's "Mastiff" (New Yorker), and Laura Van Den Berg's "Antarctica" (Glimmer Train) were also very strong indeed.
November 24, 2014
Without having read the collection, I chose it for a fiction workshop I'm teaching this winter. I regret that choice. We'll still learn from reading these stories and discussing them, but I wish there were more stories I'd want my students to emulate.
September 19, 2021
I really enjoy short stories. A few years ago I came across my first edition of this series. I don’t even remember what year it was from because I donated it back to the book sale I originally bought it from. I’ve made it a goal to catch up reading each edition up to the current year. As with most story collections I do not expect to love them all and am happy if at least half of them affected me.
In this year’s edition, Jennifer Egan made the selections as guest editor. Although editor Heidi Pitlor and Egan write in their intros that having a story chosen for this collection gives many new authors recognition, I found there were many who had stories in previous years editions and some pretty well-known names like Ann Beattie, T.C. Boyle and Joyce Carol Oates. But their stories were not necessarily my favorites.
There was only one story that I thought was in any way uplifting. The others were peopled with damaged characters and told from unique points of view. I thought seven were very good and only one that I wondered what Pitlor and Egan saw in it that I did not.
My favorites were:
Charity by Charles Baxter – A very sad story about the downward spiral to addiction by an altruistic man who comes home from volunteering in Ethiopia where he contracted a debilitating virus.
After the Flood by Peter Cameron– An elderly couple duped into helping a family who lost everything in a destructive flood. Unknown to the family and the church pastor who pressured the couple into taking them in, they are dealing with their own devastating loss.
Long Term Lookout by Nicole Cullen – Another case of someone being pressured to step in to help under duress. A woman is forced to take in her husband’s son by another woman. She takes the little boy on a road trip ending up in Idaho working in a lookout tower reporting wildfires and collecting weather data. Despite the undercurrent of rage at her husband and being strapped with the child, you can sense the bond she is forming with the boy to a tragic ending.
Hover by Nell Freudenberger – This was the story I found uplifting. It’s still a bit sad as a mother watches her socially awkward little boy be bullied. But she comes up with a unique way to intervene.
A Hand Reached Out to Guide Me by David Gates – A guy who plays in a small time Bluegrass band meets Paul Thompson who he considers one of the greats. Thompson tells stories of the good old days of partying and playing. Through the years they stay in touch. While the protagonist goes on to live an interesting life, living on a farm in New Hampshire, commuting to teach at a university, he never loses his love for music. Each year he invites old friends and bandmates to the farm for a weekend of festivities. Thompson shows up to these weekends, usually with a different woman each time. As years go by, Thompson is dying and wants to spend his last days on the farm with his friend. The portrayal of a person fading away as they die of cancer is very accurate and can be painful for anyone who has cared for someone in their last days.
This Is Not a Love Song by Brendan Matthews – This story was told in a unique way. It is told from the point of view of a woman who spent years photographing her friend Kate who wanted to be a rock star. Now she is going through the photos of Kate, telling her and their story. In the end, it is obvious that she was in love with Kate.
Next to Nothing by Stephen O’Connor – Odd characters, Isabel and Ivy, sisters who are emotionally removed from everyone around them including their children. When catastrophe strikes, a decision is made and you wonder about what the emotional consequences will be.
In this year’s edition, Jennifer Egan made the selections as guest editor. Although editor Heidi Pitlor and Egan write in their intros that having a story chosen for this collection gives many new authors recognition, I found there were many who had stories in previous years editions and some pretty well-known names like Ann Beattie, T.C. Boyle and Joyce Carol Oates. But their stories were not necessarily my favorites.
There was only one story that I thought was in any way uplifting. The others were peopled with damaged characters and told from unique points of view. I thought seven were very good and only one that I wondered what Pitlor and Egan saw in it that I did not.
My favorites were:
Charity by Charles Baxter – A very sad story about the downward spiral to addiction by an altruistic man who comes home from volunteering in Ethiopia where he contracted a debilitating virus.
After the Flood by Peter Cameron– An elderly couple duped into helping a family who lost everything in a destructive flood. Unknown to the family and the church pastor who pressured the couple into taking them in, they are dealing with their own devastating loss.
Long Term Lookout by Nicole Cullen – Another case of someone being pressured to step in to help under duress. A woman is forced to take in her husband’s son by another woman. She takes the little boy on a road trip ending up in Idaho working in a lookout tower reporting wildfires and collecting weather data. Despite the undercurrent of rage at her husband and being strapped with the child, you can sense the bond she is forming with the boy to a tragic ending.
Hover by Nell Freudenberger – This was the story I found uplifting. It’s still a bit sad as a mother watches her socially awkward little boy be bullied. But she comes up with a unique way to intervene.
A Hand Reached Out to Guide Me by David Gates – A guy who plays in a small time Bluegrass band meets Paul Thompson who he considers one of the greats. Thompson tells stories of the good old days of partying and playing. Through the years they stay in touch. While the protagonist goes on to live an interesting life, living on a farm in New Hampshire, commuting to teach at a university, he never loses his love for music. Each year he invites old friends and bandmates to the farm for a weekend of festivities. Thompson shows up to these weekends, usually with a different woman each time. As years go by, Thompson is dying and wants to spend his last days on the farm with his friend. The portrayal of a person fading away as they die of cancer is very accurate and can be painful for anyone who has cared for someone in their last days.
This Is Not a Love Song by Brendan Matthews – This story was told in a unique way. It is told from the point of view of a woman who spent years photographing her friend Kate who wanted to be a rock star. Now she is going through the photos of Kate, telling her and their story. In the end, it is obvious that she was in love with Kate.
Next to Nothing by Stephen O’Connor – Odd characters, Isabel and Ivy, sisters who are emotionally removed from everyone around them including their children. When catastrophe strikes, a decision is made and you wonder about what the emotional consequences will be.
January 26, 2015
These are not saccharine coated formulaic stories.
A while ago I read a talk by Dr Tim Keller about the search for happiness. He said that there are basically three types of people: the (young &) naive who think that happiness is inevitable, the cynics who think that happiness is impossible and those of us who are too busy running the rat race because we think that happiness is just around the corner. Keller says that the cynics are often our best thinkers, our most successful people. This book lends support to Keller's thesis because each one of these short stories is a depressing exploration of dysfunctional relationships and hopelessness.
The first story in this collection "Charity" by Charles Baxter is about a man who was broken while trying to serve others in an overseas aid situation and the dysfunctional homosexual relationship which, in the end, fails.
"The Indian Uprising" by Ann Beattie is about the relationship between a retired professor and his former student, where they run into her former husband in a restaurant, and the retired professor collapses and, eventually, dies.
"The Night of the Satellite" by T.C. Boyle is the story of a strained relationship between a couple who happen to encounter another couple who are fighting on the road, which leads to a further breakdown in their relationship but ends with a suggestion of hope. (The closest thing to hope in the whole collections)
"After the Flood" by Peter Cameron describes the sad decline of an elderly couple who are pressured to act as Christians by their pastor but, in the process, realise that they don't have faith and decide not to pretend any more.
"Long Tom Lookout" by Nicole Cullen is about a wife who is separated from her husband and forced to look after his child (had with another woman during their marriage). She flees the situation, with the child, who is eventually lost to her.
"Medium Tough" by Craig Davidson is the story of a man born deformed due to his mother's addiction who seems to make a success of his life, but ends up too weak to save his own son's life.
"The Breeze" by Joshua Ferris is a clever "choose your own adventure" exploration of the many various ways a couple can have a disastrous date night.
"Hover" by Nell Freudenberger is the story of a mother's inadequacy as she tries to help her child navigate the challenges of childhood and school while also dealing with her own issues.
"A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me" by David Gates is the story of a man whose own broken life is the only support a terminally ill man will eventually accept.
"At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners" by Lauren Groff tells of the life of a man who was raised by his parents, then his mother when she fled the relationship and then the father when he reclaimed him. As he grows up, he somehow wins the love of a practical woman, which serves him well as he goes deaf and makes a mistake which almost kills him.
"The Judge's Will" by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala is a story set in Delhi of an elderly man, his wife and son and his mistress as they prepare for the man's death while dealing with the son's mental illness, the wife's sense of betrayal and the mistress's anticipated destitution.
"Evie M." by D.A. Lindsey is about a lonely man whose live has fallen apart and is preparing to commit suicide.
"Kattenkoppen" by Will Mackin is set among the troops in Afghanistan and focusses on unwanted food gifts and the fruitless search for soldiers who'd been captured by the Taliban.
"This Is Not a Love Song" by Brendan Mathews follows the brief, tragic life of Kat, a young rock singer, as seen through the eyes of her childhood friend and documentary photographer, Gerry.
"La Pulchra Nota" by Molly McNett is set in 1370 and tells of a deformed vocal teacher who marries but whose first child dies. His wife falls apart. He accidentally attracts the love of a student, which he recoils from. He goes home in turmoil, rapes his wife and falls down the stairs and becomes a quadriplegic!
"God" by Benjamin Nugent is set in a fraternity house and tells the story of how a girl gives up her virginity only for the guy to realise/admit he is homosexual.
"Mastiff" by Joyce Carol Oates follows the inner thoughts and emotions of an older, petite single lady as she is on a date with her boyfriend when they get attacked by a vicious dog and he ends up in hospital in intensive care.
"Next to Nothing" by Stephen O'Connor tells the story of two sisters who have no emotional attachment to the world - their parents, neighbours, husbands or their own children. When tragedy strikes, one sister willingly lets the other sister go to her death because it increases the chances of saving one of the children. But then she questions whether saving a child whose lost its mother is a good idea anyway.
"Madame Bovary's Greyhound" by Karen Russell appears to start as a story about an unhappy wife, but then follows the dog as it breaks free, becomes disillusioned and broken by its freedom and eventually finds a dull master. This may also count as a happy ending!
"Antarctica" by Laura Van Den Berg seems to be about a sister who travels to Antarctica following the death of her brother there. But then the story expands to explore why he left, why their relationship broke down, why his marriage broke down and, perhaps, why the sister will follow in the footsteps of the lost wife.
So, you can see why I said this book is a collection of stories about dysfunctional relationships and hopelessness. Now, I don't read many short stories, so I can't tell you if this is unusual for the genre or whether it is peculiar to the (intentional or unintentional) selection by Jennifer Egan. I admit the stories are written with care and creativity. They engage your imagination and, on occasion, your emotions. They are not BAD stories. They are WELL-WRITTEN stories. But they tell us something about our culture if they are a selection of the BEST stories written this year. I appreciated that they were not saccharine coated formulaic stories.
A while ago I read a talk by Dr Tim Keller about the search for happiness. He said that there are basically three types of people: the (young &) naive who think that happiness is inevitable, the cynics who think that happiness is impossible and those of us who are too busy running the rat race because we think that happiness is just around the corner. Keller says that the cynics are often our best thinkers, our most successful people. This book lends support to Keller's thesis because each one of these short stories is a depressing exploration of dysfunctional relationships and hopelessness.
The first story in this collection "Charity" by Charles Baxter is about a man who was broken while trying to serve others in an overseas aid situation and the dysfunctional homosexual relationship which, in the end, fails.
"The Indian Uprising" by Ann Beattie is about the relationship between a retired professor and his former student, where they run into her former husband in a restaurant, and the retired professor collapses and, eventually, dies.
"The Night of the Satellite" by T.C. Boyle is the story of a strained relationship between a couple who happen to encounter another couple who are fighting on the road, which leads to a further breakdown in their relationship but ends with a suggestion of hope. (The closest thing to hope in the whole collections)
"After the Flood" by Peter Cameron describes the sad decline of an elderly couple who are pressured to act as Christians by their pastor but, in the process, realise that they don't have faith and decide not to pretend any more.
"Long Tom Lookout" by Nicole Cullen is about a wife who is separated from her husband and forced to look after his child (had with another woman during their marriage). She flees the situation, with the child, who is eventually lost to her.
"Medium Tough" by Craig Davidson is the story of a man born deformed due to his mother's addiction who seems to make a success of his life, but ends up too weak to save his own son's life.
"The Breeze" by Joshua Ferris is a clever "choose your own adventure" exploration of the many various ways a couple can have a disastrous date night.
"Hover" by Nell Freudenberger is the story of a mother's inadequacy as she tries to help her child navigate the challenges of childhood and school while also dealing with her own issues.
"A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me" by David Gates is the story of a man whose own broken life is the only support a terminally ill man will eventually accept.
"At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners" by Lauren Groff tells of the life of a man who was raised by his parents, then his mother when she fled the relationship and then the father when he reclaimed him. As he grows up, he somehow wins the love of a practical woman, which serves him well as he goes deaf and makes a mistake which almost kills him.
"The Judge's Will" by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala is a story set in Delhi of an elderly man, his wife and son and his mistress as they prepare for the man's death while dealing with the son's mental illness, the wife's sense of betrayal and the mistress's anticipated destitution.
"Evie M." by D.A. Lindsey is about a lonely man whose live has fallen apart and is preparing to commit suicide.
"Kattenkoppen" by Will Mackin is set among the troops in Afghanistan and focusses on unwanted food gifts and the fruitless search for soldiers who'd been captured by the Taliban.
"This Is Not a Love Song" by Brendan Mathews follows the brief, tragic life of Kat, a young rock singer, as seen through the eyes of her childhood friend and documentary photographer, Gerry.
"La Pulchra Nota" by Molly McNett is set in 1370 and tells of a deformed vocal teacher who marries but whose first child dies. His wife falls apart. He accidentally attracts the love of a student, which he recoils from. He goes home in turmoil, rapes his wife and falls down the stairs and becomes a quadriplegic!
"God" by Benjamin Nugent is set in a fraternity house and tells the story of how a girl gives up her virginity only for the guy to realise/admit he is homosexual.
"Mastiff" by Joyce Carol Oates follows the inner thoughts and emotions of an older, petite single lady as she is on a date with her boyfriend when they get attacked by a vicious dog and he ends up in hospital in intensive care.
"Next to Nothing" by Stephen O'Connor tells the story of two sisters who have no emotional attachment to the world - their parents, neighbours, husbands or their own children. When tragedy strikes, one sister willingly lets the other sister go to her death because it increases the chances of saving one of the children. But then she questions whether saving a child whose lost its mother is a good idea anyway.
"Madame Bovary's Greyhound" by Karen Russell appears to start as a story about an unhappy wife, but then follows the dog as it breaks free, becomes disillusioned and broken by its freedom and eventually finds a dull master. This may also count as a happy ending!
"Antarctica" by Laura Van Den Berg seems to be about a sister who travels to Antarctica following the death of her brother there. But then the story expands to explore why he left, why their relationship broke down, why his marriage broke down and, perhaps, why the sister will follow in the footsteps of the lost wife.
So, you can see why I said this book is a collection of stories about dysfunctional relationships and hopelessness. Now, I don't read many short stories, so I can't tell you if this is unusual for the genre or whether it is peculiar to the (intentional or unintentional) selection by Jennifer Egan. I admit the stories are written with care and creativity. They engage your imagination and, on occasion, your emotions. They are not BAD stories. They are WELL-WRITTEN stories. But they tell us something about our culture if they are a selection of the BEST stories written this year. I appreciated that they were not saccharine coated formulaic stories.
July 1, 2021
Though it's a half dozen years old, the angst that these stories capture are with us still, witness a line from T.C. Boyle's story "The Night of the Satellite" ("I got out, mounted the three steps to the concrete walkway where the ATM was, and waited the requisite six feet six inches away from the middle-aged woman...who was just then feeling in her card.") and all you would need is both characters to be masked to bring it up to contemporary speed. Most the stories entertained, some more than others, though I found a few that seemed to end willy-nilly, which in a way is the basic problem with a short story. How do you make it so its not too schematic in terms of plot, nor too much a "slice of life," and how do you avoid so much back-story that it starts to read like a novel in miniature? And of course, whatever is "Best" is someone's option. That having been said, I liked this collection.
January 30, 2022
Back on my Best American bullshit! I used to dream of owning a complete set of these and I'd bought back editions from the 70s. Then I actually tried to read 1971, and turns out there is little I can learn from reading what was "literary" 40 years ago (very white, very male).
Just reread Visit From the Goon Squad and was in the mood for stories, not novels, so picked this up from my 1987-onward stack. Like all Best Americans, this had some incredible standouts and some of the worst sentences I've ever had the misfortune to read ("I felt like an ant that had walked the length of a caterpillar's body and ended up at its anus"), often in the same story!!!! I am also fatigued with academics as characters and NYC as the epicenter, but that's nothing new--what IS new is reading the author notes (really my favorite part of these dang books) where the most interesting details of these stories was often lifted right out of life, ie a failure of Professional Writer's imagination but also strangely hopeful, too.
Names to note: Nicole Cullen, Craig Davidson (alias Nick Cutter!), Molly McNett, Benjamin Nugent, Stephen O'Connor.
20 stories down, 202 to go in 2022.
Just reread Visit From the Goon Squad and was in the mood for stories, not novels, so picked this up from my 1987-onward stack. Like all Best Americans, this had some incredible standouts and some of the worst sentences I've ever had the misfortune to read ("I felt like an ant that had walked the length of a caterpillar's body and ended up at its anus"), often in the same story!!!! I am also fatigued with academics as characters and NYC as the epicenter, but that's nothing new--what IS new is reading the author notes (really my favorite part of these dang books) where the most interesting details of these stories was often lifted right out of life, ie a failure of Professional Writer's imagination but also strangely hopeful, too.
Names to note: Nicole Cullen, Craig Davidson (alias Nick Cutter!), Molly McNett, Benjamin Nugent, Stephen O'Connor.
20 stories down, 202 to go in 2022.
September 3, 2024
Favorite stories:
"After the Flood" - Peter Cameron
"Long Tom Lookout" - Nicole Cullen
"Hover" - Nell Freudenberger
"La Pulchra Nota" - Molly McNett
"Madame Bovary's Greyhound" - Karen Russell
"Antarctica" - Laura Van Den Berg
"After the Flood" - Peter Cameron
"Long Tom Lookout" - Nicole Cullen
"Hover" - Nell Freudenberger
"La Pulchra Nota" - Molly McNett
"Madame Bovary's Greyhound" - Karen Russell
"Antarctica" - Laura Van Den Berg
March 2, 2015
A good collection of diverse stories. My favorites include:
"Charity" starts as a narrative of what happened to Quinn the days before he disappeared, his money and health problems are intertwined and lead to a drug dealer and he is afraid of asking his boyfriend in Seattle for help--the story then shifts to a first person account by the boyfriend who tries to find and help Quinn, the shift in narrative gives different perspectives to both characters--and certainly different relationships with Quinn's drug dealer
"After the flood" is told from perspective of a woman who's asked by her minister if she and her retired husband can temporarily take in a family whose home was lost in a flood. The story brings back memories of the tragedy that hit her daughter and grandaughter and shows how she and her husband have dealt with the grief, and with the different religious approaches that sought to comfort them
"Long Tom Lookout" is a story of a woman who unexpectedly finds herself stuck with her husband's autistic son and then decides to flee with him to her Idaho home.By the end of the story the reader wonders if the other characters are as troubled and bad as they appear to be or if the objective clues in the story point to a certain craziness in the author
"A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me" is narrated by a professor over the years with a focus on his friend Paul Thompson, an almost famous bluegrass performer. Thompson appears in his life at key times over the years, his last request is to move into the professor's home at the end of his lost battle with cancer; it is Paul's death that jolts the professor and his second wife into a new life
"This is not a Love Song" is a retrospective of a famous rock singer's life told by a high school friend whose friendship and photographs of the rock star helped start the photographer's career
"Mastiff" recounts a hike of two single people well into adulthood; when one of them is attacked by a mastiff(whose owner flees the park) it puts their lives and relationship into perspective
In "Antartica" a woman goes to Antarctica shortly after her brother, a scientist who was working there is killed in an explosion. During her trip she recounts the time she lived with him and his wife and we learn of the secret of why the wife left as she regrets to herself that she never told her brother the secret
"Charity" starts as a narrative of what happened to Quinn the days before he disappeared, his money and health problems are intertwined and lead to a drug dealer and he is afraid of asking his boyfriend in Seattle for help--the story then shifts to a first person account by the boyfriend who tries to find and help Quinn, the shift in narrative gives different perspectives to both characters--and certainly different relationships with Quinn's drug dealer
"After the flood" is told from perspective of a woman who's asked by her minister if she and her retired husband can temporarily take in a family whose home was lost in a flood. The story brings back memories of the tragedy that hit her daughter and grandaughter and shows how she and her husband have dealt with the grief, and with the different religious approaches that sought to comfort them
"Long Tom Lookout" is a story of a woman who unexpectedly finds herself stuck with her husband's autistic son and then decides to flee with him to her Idaho home.By the end of the story the reader wonders if the other characters are as troubled and bad as they appear to be or if the objective clues in the story point to a certain craziness in the author
"A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me" is narrated by a professor over the years with a focus on his friend Paul Thompson, an almost famous bluegrass performer. Thompson appears in his life at key times over the years, his last request is to move into the professor's home at the end of his lost battle with cancer; it is Paul's death that jolts the professor and his second wife into a new life
"This is not a Love Song" is a retrospective of a famous rock singer's life told by a high school friend whose friendship and photographs of the rock star helped start the photographer's career
"Mastiff" recounts a hike of two single people well into adulthood; when one of them is attacked by a mastiff(whose owner flees the park) it puts their lives and relationship into perspective
In "Antartica" a woman goes to Antarctica shortly after her brother, a scientist who was working there is killed in an explosion. During her trip she recounts the time she lived with him and his wife and we learn of the secret of why the wife left as she regrets to herself that she never told her brother the secret
October 26, 2015
The 20 stories in this collection range from merely very good to outstanding.
The curating hand of editor Jennifer Egan feels tangible to me, both in the gender balance of writers, which is pretty much 50-50, and a skew toward longer, more experimental writing toward the back of the collection.
If the stories have anything in common, it is their distinct settings. Reading the collection end to end, I got a feeling of travelogue, of visiting a broad range of places, times, and subcultures: a lonely forest lookout post, an emergency room, a rural retreat, an English village in the late Middle Ages, a college frat house, an Antarctic science station. (It’s also interesting, though probably irrelevant, that in two of the stories, the title characters are dogs.)
My favorites:
Anne Beattie’s “The Indian Uprising”: This poignant portrait of an aging academic starts boldly, with several pages of nothing but dialogue, and ends with an emotional punch.
Nicole Cullen’s “Long Tom Lookout”: The story of an estranged wife saddled with a troubled child.
Craig Davidson’s “Medium Tough”: Impressive medical detail, compelling story.
David Gates’ “A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me”: I was big into Gates early in his career, and I’m just as impressed with him now.
Molly McNett’s “La Pulchra Nota:” The first of three unusual love stories in a row, this one set at the close of the 14th century.
Benjamin Nugent’s “God”: Also a kind of love story in a very particular setting, a college frat house. It has a strong, internally logical ending.
Joyce Carol Oates’ “Mastiff”: A third offbeat love story in a row – again I feel Egan’s careful curating hand – that gave me insight into a woman’s feeling about a man.
Stephen O’Connor’s “Next to Nothing”: Here is where things start getting a bit postmodern. It may be the most memorable story in the collection to me because I changed my mind about it as I went along, which doesn’t happen very often. It surprised me.
Laura Van Den Berg’s “Antarctica”: An intriguing psychological mystery at the world’s remotest edge, just the right place to end the collection.
The curating hand of editor Jennifer Egan feels tangible to me, both in the gender balance of writers, which is pretty much 50-50, and a skew toward longer, more experimental writing toward the back of the collection.
If the stories have anything in common, it is their distinct settings. Reading the collection end to end, I got a feeling of travelogue, of visiting a broad range of places, times, and subcultures: a lonely forest lookout post, an emergency room, a rural retreat, an English village in the late Middle Ages, a college frat house, an Antarctic science station. (It’s also interesting, though probably irrelevant, that in two of the stories, the title characters are dogs.)
My favorites:
Anne Beattie’s “The Indian Uprising”: This poignant portrait of an aging academic starts boldly, with several pages of nothing but dialogue, and ends with an emotional punch.
Nicole Cullen’s “Long Tom Lookout”: The story of an estranged wife saddled with a troubled child.
Craig Davidson’s “Medium Tough”: Impressive medical detail, compelling story.
David Gates’ “A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me”: I was big into Gates early in his career, and I’m just as impressed with him now.
Molly McNett’s “La Pulchra Nota:” The first of three unusual love stories in a row, this one set at the close of the 14th century.
Benjamin Nugent’s “God”: Also a kind of love story in a very particular setting, a college frat house. It has a strong, internally logical ending.
Joyce Carol Oates’ “Mastiff”: A third offbeat love story in a row – again I feel Egan’s careful curating hand – that gave me insight into a woman’s feeling about a man.
Stephen O’Connor’s “Next to Nothing”: Here is where things start getting a bit postmodern. It may be the most memorable story in the collection to me because I changed my mind about it as I went along, which doesn’t happen very often. It surprised me.
Laura Van Den Berg’s “Antarctica”: An intriguing psychological mystery at the world’s remotest edge, just the right place to end the collection.
January 7, 2015
Short stories are like unwanted orphans. Some lucky ones are published in major periodicals or an author’s collection or win a prize. But even great short stories can appear in a literary review and remain largely unread except by a devout following of readers. They languish in the background waiting to be noticed. Thankfully the Best American Short Stories anthology helps to highlight some stellar examples of story telling every year. This year’s anthology holds particularly impressive examples with stories that differ wildly in form and subject matter as well as spanning many different time periods and locations. The narrator of one story is former female soldier suffering from post traumatic stress while another narrator has kidnapped her stepson and yet another narrator is a closeted macho fraternity brother. There is a story set in 1370 and a story set on Antarctica and a story with sprawling multiple endings. It’s particularly touching that this anthology includes a beautiful, unusual story about a marriage disrupted (or perhaps not) from an affair by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala who died in April of 2013. Every other author has written what might be called “added bonus material” for the end of this anthology where each of them discusses their inspiration for writing her/his story.
Full my full review on LonesomeReader review of Best American Short Stories 2014 edited by Jennifer Egan
Full my full review on LonesomeReader review of Best American Short Stories 2014 edited by Jennifer Egan
April 11, 2015
I read this anthology - or try to - most years. In my house, I have a long, colorful, if not particularly prominent bookshelf devoted to the series. But some years it's tough to get through...
Not this year. Jennifer Egan, rightly acclaimed for her genre jumping, bending and blending literary short fiction and novels, and this year's guest editor, picked a varied and often surprising group of winners. As she says in her introduction: "If there was a single factor that decided whether a story ended up in my ongoing pile of contenders, it was its basic power to make me lose my bearings, to envelop me in a fictional world."
How do the writers do this for her: (1) vivid specific language; (2) a compelling premise; and (3) a move that genuinely surprised her and pushed the story past the predictable into the wonderful.
As a writer, this makes sense to me; at this point I can do 1 and 2 fairly reliably. 3 is where I fall short - and in this anthology, it's also what makes so many of these stories so interesting and fun to read.
p.s. The one downside of the volume is its lack of ethnic and cultural diversity, though there is diversity of many other kinds.
Not this year. Jennifer Egan, rightly acclaimed for her genre jumping, bending and blending literary short fiction and novels, and this year's guest editor, picked a varied and often surprising group of winners. As she says in her introduction: "If there was a single factor that decided whether a story ended up in my ongoing pile of contenders, it was its basic power to make me lose my bearings, to envelop me in a fictional world."
How do the writers do this for her: (1) vivid specific language; (2) a compelling premise; and (3) a move that genuinely surprised her and pushed the story past the predictable into the wonderful.
As a writer, this makes sense to me; at this point I can do 1 and 2 fairly reliably. 3 is where I fall short - and in this anthology, it's also what makes so many of these stories so interesting and fun to read.
p.s. The one downside of the volume is its lack of ethnic and cultural diversity, though there is diversity of many other kinds.
January 11, 2015
I was disappointed by this collection. I love a good short story and thought there were few of those in this year's. Yes, the subject matter of many of the stories was depressing but that wasn't what really bothered me - I felt like some of the stories were just poorly written (amateur hour), in which every sentence felt like an overworked struggle, and the others that were well-written were just not engrossing. At all. However, there were a few standout exceptions for me: Long Tom Lookout, After the Flood (enjoyed the voice in this one tremendously), At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners, and Madame Bovary's Greyhound. This last one was too sad to bear (I can't stand anything with animal suffering of any kind), but ultimately so beautifully written and effortlessly genius that it won me over.
May 21, 2016
This is one of the best collections of short stories that I've read in awhile.
If you're famililar with my reviews, you know how often I say, "Like any collection, this has its highs and lows." That is definitely my norm. However, with this collection, something "clicked" with each story for me, and perhaps that was due to Egan's wonderful preface, as she sets this collection up as stories that surprised her. I found this to be true for me, as well.
Each story, while familiar in human-ness and strong prose, took an unexpected turn or explored a crevasse that I would've overlooked at any other time.
No, this collection might not work for you, but it's one that could--and should--be studied for stories that are both unexpected but feel so necessary in their purpose and direction that you never feel off-balance when it takes you in a new direction.
If you're famililar with my reviews, you know how often I say, "Like any collection, this has its highs and lows." That is definitely my norm. However, with this collection, something "clicked" with each story for me, and perhaps that was due to Egan's wonderful preface, as she sets this collection up as stories that surprised her. I found this to be true for me, as well.
Each story, while familiar in human-ness and strong prose, took an unexpected turn or explored a crevasse that I would've overlooked at any other time.
No, this collection might not work for you, but it's one that could--and should--be studied for stories that are both unexpected but feel so necessary in their purpose and direction that you never feel off-balance when it takes you in a new direction.
January 13, 2015
Somehow these books always end up as a slog. I thought it might be a bad sign when I couldn't make it through the guest editor's intro (establish a more rigorous short story aesthetic? really?). And the annual hand-wringing over the state of the short story, the precious magazines that publish them, and technology's affect on the artist. Gag me with a spoon! However, there were some goodies. Peter Cameron's After the Flood was emotionally powerful yet had me laughing my ass off. TC Boyle's story also had some cool moments. If only all 20 stories had been simlarly striking.
December 1, 2014
Overall, a very solid collection, with a few stories I loved, several that were really good, some that were nice but forgettable, and only one that really irked me.
Favorites:
The Indian Uprising
After the Flood
Medium Tough
La Pulchra Nota
God
Runners-up:
Charity
The Night of the Satellite
A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me
The Judge's Will
Kattekoppen
Mastiff
Next to Nothing
Antarctica
Favorites:
The Indian Uprising
After the Flood
Medium Tough
La Pulchra Nota
God
Runners-up:
Charity
The Night of the Satellite
A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me
The Judge's Will
Kattekoppen
Mastiff
Next to Nothing
Antarctica
December 6, 2014
I do enjoy this collection. Thankfully, there were only 5 stories from the New Yorker so it wasn't as redundant as some years. I just love the contributor's notes at the back of the book- learning the author's impetus for the story adds a dimension that truly enhances the reading experience for me.
If you only skim this book, go right to the back and read two particularly wonderful stories, Karen Russell's "Madame Bovary's Greyhound" and Laura Van Den Berg's "Antarctica".
If you only skim this book, go right to the back and read two particularly wonderful stories, Karen Russell's "Madame Bovary's Greyhound" and Laura Van Den Berg's "Antarctica".
June 3, 2015
I chose this book for my upcoming sessions at St. Johnsbury Academy in both "AP English Literature and Composition" and "Teaching and Practicing the Art of Fiction" (co-taught with my brother Tom).
Although the landscape of American fiction appears to be pretty dark, there is a lot to recommend these stories. We chose these 6 for special attention: After the Flood, Medium Tough, Hover, The Judge’s Will, Evie M., and La Pulchra Nota. The other stories we will use for special projects.
Although the landscape of American fiction appears to be pretty dark, there is a lot to recommend these stories. We chose these 6 for special attention: After the Flood, Medium Tough, Hover, The Judge’s Will, Evie M., and La Pulchra Nota. The other stories we will use for special projects.
December 14, 2015
Another strong short story collection. My favorites were "Hover" by Nell Freudenberger and "This Is Not a Love Song" by Brendan Matthews. I also enjoyed "At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners," by Lauren Groff, "Charity" by Charles Baxter, "After the Flood," by Peter Cameron, "Long Tom Lookout," by Nicole Cullen, "The Judge's Will," by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, "Kattekoppen," by Will Mackin, "God" by Benjamin Nugent, "Mastiff" by Joyce Carol Oates, and "Antarctica" by Laura Van Den Berg.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 200 reviews