Christopher’s Reviews > The Best American Short Stories 2014: The Annual Literary Anthology Selected by Jennifer Egan > Status Update

Laura Van Der Berg's "Antarctica" is probably the third best story in the book, in my opinion. It's long, but it carries its weight well, and uses an interesting plot to draw the reader along.

There's a problem with reading something that you know is riffing off something, but you haven't read the original. It sits you a step further away, aware of the fiction. This was a problem for me with Karen Russell's "Madame Bovary's Greyhound." The story is a hybrid between the victorian women's fiction, and Call of the Wild, about a return to nature, and a woman that not even a dog could love.

Stephen O'Connor's "Next to Nothing" has a hell of a gut check at the end, but it's too winding in getting to the punch. Also, I can't read it without picturing Patty and Selma from the Simpsons. That's a challenge for writers in the "unlikable and unnaturally close middle aged sisters" genre.

Joyce Carol Oates' "The Mastiff" is a piece that is very sound from a technical perspective. Something major happens in the story, which is always a plus in the books of myself and my fellows in the "Alice Munro says 'Fuck Amy Hemple'" school of short fiction readers, but in the end, it just doesn't quite make the leap from good execution to masterpiece.

Ben Nugent's "God" has a great ending, but a body that reads like Lena Dunham's Van Wilder fanfic. And that's about all I have to say about that.

Molly McNett's "La Pulchra Nota" puts lie to the old quote about happy and unhappy families. It tells the same story of the same unhappy family that gets reskinned ad resold far too often. The only thing setting it apart is the dedication to the period. McNett's writing lets the inherent tragedy of life in the 12th century shine through.

Brendan Mathews' "This Is Not a Love Song" is neck and neck with "Night of the Satellite" for my favorite story in this collection so far. It's fragmented, but it grounds each fragment firmly in such a manner as to give a true feel for the narrator.

Three stories, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's "The Judge's Will," O. A. Lindsey's "Evie M.," and Will Mackin's "Kattekoppen." Of the three, I think Judge's Will is the best story, Evie M. was the most enjoyable. Kattekoppen had a lot of research flaws that pulled me out. If a story in a modern setting calls DEVGRU "Seal Team Six," you know they didn't quite do their research.

"A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me" by David Gates. This story tries to replicate the almost casual ease with which some stories, most notably those of Alice Munro, stretch vast amounts of time in short sections of prose. It's hit or miss in that regard, but it presents a story of friendship that leaves an impression.

There's something very hard to pin down about Joshua Ferris' "The Breeze." It's disjointed, segmented, in the inhuman manner of a contortionist, and it manages to navigate a sense of unworldliness, without having to lean on it too hard.

In contrast, the supernatural conceit of Nell Freudenberger's "Hover" destroys it. Taking a collection of already utterly unlikable characters and unmooring them from reality.