Anthony’s Reviews > The Best American Short Stories 2021 > Status Update

Read Nicole Krauss’s fascinating “Switzerland,” which explores the vulnerabilities of young women who are just beginning to explore their sexuality and agency. Krauss does an excellent job of leaning into painful and frightening ambiguities, although she does veer toward moments of being a bit too much on the nose.

Read Jamil Jan Kochai’s incredibly powerful, hallucinatory “Playing Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain”

Read Brandon Hobson’s “Escape from the Dysphesiac People,” an achingly hypnotic tale of a young Native man who’s forcibly removed from his home.

Read Rita Chang-Eppig’s intriguing but uneven “The Miracle Girl,” which finds fresh ways to interrogate missionaries’ racist work; and Vanessa Cuti’s “Our Children,” which features one of the most effectively shocking, upsetting turns I’ve ever read in a short story.

Read Gabriel Bump’s “To Buffalo Eastward,” which authentically captures a heartbroken young man’s compulsive behavior on a long road trip.