| Title | : | The Best American Short Stories 2019 |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | - |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Audible Audio |
| Number of Pages | : | - |
| Publication | : | First published October 1, 2019 |
The Best American Short Stories 2019 Reviews
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I've always loved the Best American Short Stories series, but I've only reviewed
one of the volumes on here. It's about time I reviewed another.
As I wrote in the earlier review, what I like most about these collections is discovering new authors. That was definitely true this year. Of the 20 authors in this collection, I had only heard of 10 before, and of those 10 I had only read books by 3 of them. So: lots of discoveries, lots of names committed to memory, lots of scanning biographies to take note of their (in many cases) first books. The authors come from a huge range of cultural backgrounds.
Guest editor Anthony Doerr's introduction is utterly charming. Besides discussing his own painful early attempts at the form, he talks about how rules for writing short stories only go so far, pointing out that many of the ones collected in this book break traditional rules about POV, character likability, exposition and subplots. But they all cast a spell. And he's right.
Here are my thoughts on all the stories, in the order (alphabetical) in which they appear in the book:
"The Era" by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Rating: ****
A powerful story set in a bleak dystopia about a world in which truth-telling outweighs kindness and empathy. Narrator Ben is a 15-year-old rebellious high-schooler who's dissatisfied with life. Sure, that's an overly familiar theme, but Ben really doesn't fit in anywhere. He's a clear-born, i.e., not an "optimal" child like his bossy older sister, and his parents don't hold back in telling him he's always been unwanted. Every student is given a morning dose of something called Good, but Ben has become addicted to the drug, which temporarily makes him forget his troubles. A visit with a schoolmate's family, however, shows him that another kind of life is possible. So maybe there's a bit of hope. Adjei-Brenyah has a bold, confident voice, and despite the nightmarish scenario he offers up lots of dark humour, just like George Saunders, who's the most obvious influence here.
"Natural Light" by Kathleen Alcott:
Rating: ***
A mentally unstable woman sees a photograph of her dead mother in an art exhibit, which causes her to question unsaid things in her family and perhaps her failed marriage. Alcott employs dense, probing, poetic language to capture the protagonist's state of mind, and it doesn't all work.
"The Great Interruption: A Story of a Famous Story of Old Port William and How It Ceased to Be Told (1935-1978)" by Wendell Berry
Rating: ***
This nostalgic, folksy tale creeps up on you. You think it's one thing and then, in the final pages, it becomes something else. It's about small town life and lore, and the changing of one era by another.
"No More Than A Bubble" by Jamel Brinkley
Rating: ****
What starts out as a standard issue story about two young Black friends trying to hook up with women at a college party in New York City goes to some unexpected places. It's about fathers and sons, masculinity, courage, and friendship. The effect of the story was so haunting that I had to go back and reread sections to see how the author had arrived at his destination. I'm going to keep my eye on Brinkley, who teaches at the Iowa Writers Workshop and has released one story collection.
"The Third Tower" by Deborah Eisenberg
Rating: ****
A young woman with a mysterious disease (neurological? psychological?) involving the meaning of words goes to a clinic in an unnamed city to undergo tests. I'm a big fan of Eisenberg, who's devoted her long career almost exclusively to writing short stories. This is another unique and probing story that will stay with you.
"Hellion" by Julie Elliott
Rating: *****
My first "Wow" discovery. "Hellion" starts out as a rather familiar, almost cliché tale of what happens when a scrappy girl's sensitive city cousin comes to visit her in her home in the swamps of South Carolina, but the writing is so spiky and vivid, and the protagonist's world – both physical and emotional – so fully realized, that she won me over completely. It's a miniature coming-of-age tale, but it's also about class, gender and human potential. I can't wait to read more by Elliott.
"Bronze" by Jeffrey Eugenides
Rating: ****
A beautifully written story about the brief connection between two men – one a sexually confused college student and aspiring poet, the other an older, openly gay, successful New York City actor – on a train from Manhattan to Providence, Rhode Island. The era is the 1970s, and that's important in seeing what Eugenides is up to, capturing the men's mixed signals, evasions and negotiations as they get drunk on the train and deal with the aftermath. We see the events through both men's perspectives, and Eugenides has a warm, accommodating sympathy for each one. In a way "Bronze" is also about youthful ambition, love and loss, and romantic dreams of immortality.
"Protozoa" by Ella Martinsen Gorham
Rating: ****
After she hooks up with a callous fellow student who makes up hip-hop rhymes about classmates, a sensitive, lonely Grade Eight student named Noa finds herself the subject of one, which increases her popularity - or rather notoriety. Gorham captures what it feels like to be young and glued to your phone, desperate to connect online with others. Young women are particularly vulnerable in this world where friendships are just a click away and can vanish just as quickly. A disturbing and sad contemporary tale.
"Seeing Ershadi" by Nicole Krauss
Rating: *****
A haunting, elliptical piece of fiction about a dancer who becomes obsessed with actor Homayoun Ershadi after seeing him in Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami's film Taste Of Cherry. When she tours with her dance company, she spots Ershadi in a Zen garden in Tokyo. Later, she discovers a friend who also has her own mysterious connection to the actor. This story about art, connection and the mysteries of existence sent shivers down my spine.
"Pity and Shame" by Ursula K. LeGuin
Rating: ****
During the Gold Rush, a middle-aged woman nurses a man after he suffers a mining accident in this beautiful, expansive story that contains hidden depths.
"Anyone Can Do It" by Manuel Muñoz
Rating: ****
Set in a small agricultural California town, Muñoz's heartbreaking story follows Delfina, a young mother whose husband has probably been picked up by immigration authorities and is now facing some big unknowns. The ending is devastating.
"The Plan" by Sigrid Nunez
Rating: *****
Whoa. What a powerful tale about a disturbed man who's intent on doing something bad. I don't want to spoil anything, but let me just say I can't believe how Nunez gets us inside a psychopath's head.
"Letter of Apology" by Maria Reva
Rating: *****
In Reva's unforgettable story, a very ordinary KGB agent is tasked with getting a poet to formally apologize about a joke he's told. The only problem is, he can't repeat the joke or he'll be arrested as well. As the tale progresses, the tone changes from absurd to horrific and back again. Reva balances it all effortlessly. Am definitely going to read more by her.
"Black Corfu" by Karen Russell
Rating: ***
A merely okay vampire tale set centuries ago in an Eastern European town. Russell has mastered an old-fashioned prose style but there's not enough to the plot or central character – a physician who makes sure corpses don't return from the dead – to keep it compelling. Is it a metaphor for our current moment of blaming and calling out people? Perhaps, but that seems like a bit of a stretch.
"Audition" by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh
Rating: *****
Sayrafiezadeh's unforgettable story features one of the best opening lines in the collection. It's about an aspiring actor who works as a general labourer one spring for his builder father's company and, after driving one of his co-workers home, takes crack cocaine. It's a coming of age story set at a particular time – of Seinfeld, Michael Jordan, crack – and its observations about ambition, class and thwarted dreams ring terribly true. I love what Sayrafiezadeh chooses not to include as much as what he does include.
"Natural Disasters" by Alexis Schaitkin
Rating: *****
Wow. Another unknown (to me) writer astonished me. "Natural Disasters" concerns a young married New Yorker who moves to Oklahoma after her husband gets a promotion there. She has an ironic detachment about her new home, making everything she observes into a story to tell others. Even the job she gets – writing enticing descriptions of homes for a realtor – is about embellishing things. But something happens when she goes to visit one home for sale that changes her life forever. There's maybe a hint or two earlier on, but the way Schaitkin describes the scene is brilliant. I'm going to go back and study how she does it.
"Our Day of Grace" by Jim Shepard
Rating: **
A Civil War story told in letters, this story bored me – it's the only one to get less than 3 stars. It felt like a clever pastiche, a mere exercise in style. I may give it another try later, when I'm more in the mood for its period details.
"Wrong Object" by Mona Simpson
Rating: ****
A couple of decades ago, Simpson wrote a brilliant short story called "Lawns," about a troubled college student who, it is gradually revealed, is the victim of incest with her father. In this equally disturbing story, Simpson tackles another taboo sexual topic from a fascinating angle. A young therapist is treating a man with a major secret. I won't reveal the details, but Simpson paints some vivid scenes. Plus, the therapist has an interesting dynamic with her esteemed older advisor/mentor. This story made me think about the ways people are wired and how early experiences imprint on us forever. I can't wait for Simpson, an acclaimed novelist, to release a collection that has both these stories in it.
"They Told Us Not To Say This" by Jenn Alandy Trahan
Rating: ***
A brief but stylish and energetic tale about young Filipina-American high school basketball players gaining confidence on the court, if not at home, where they're considered less than their male counterparts. The final paragraphs are superbly written, but the story overall felt incomplete.
"Omakase" by Weike Wang
Rating: ****
A Chinese-American woman and her white boyfriend visit a sushi restaurant in Harlem and, over tea and the titular omakase, prepared for them specially by the Japanese chef, it soon becomes clear there are problems in their relationship. Wang is a precise, careful writer, and I love the way the tensions in the couple's relationship – arising from matters of race, power, money, entitlement and privilege – come through. It was so effective that I actually shouted back at some of the dialogue - "Oh no you didn't!" Wang's subtle observations about the Asian diasporic experience spoke to me personally, I felt. A beautiful end to a very satisfying anthology. -
Stories liked:
The Era by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Bronze by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Plan by Sigrid Nunez
Audition by Said Sayrafiezadeh
Natural Disasters by Alexis Schaitkin
Wrong Object by Mona Simpson
The rest of them, I read the first page or so and decided not to finish.
I didn't check thoroughly, but I only noticed one animal being harmed (in one of the stories I skimmed, not one of the ones listed above). I would prefer zero, but this is much better than the O. Henry Prize Stories of 2019, in which a good half dozen critters at the very least met terrible ends. -
On loan from a friend. I've rescued a bunch of these already, but this might be the first I'll have read. One tale per day ...
1 - The Era by Nana Kwame Adej-Brenyah. Very derivative of "Brave New World," but still quite arresting. Beware of the future!
2 - Natural Light by Kathleen Alcott. I'll leave this one to the editor ... "The prose in Kathleen Alcott's haunting 'Natural Light' is always trending away from straightforward clarity toward something more interesting; the central narrative hangs just out of reach as you pursue meaning down through the thickets of her sentences." Indeed, Ms Alcott's prose is challenging and the mood is depressing, just like the life of the narrator. Not necessarily a "fun" read, but pretty interesting if you can take the mood.
3 - The Great Interruption: The Story of a Famous Story of Old Port William and How It Ceased to be Told by Wendell Barry. A fine story with a surprise or two at the end. It reminded me of Ray Bradbury's Green Town stories. A look back at halcyon days and cultural change. Port William is in Kentucky. Fictional? Yes and no ... the original and real Port William had its name changed to Carrollton in 1838. Barry has used the town for the setting on a number of his works. His real home town was Port Royal, Kentucky. It's a little confusing but Wiki has the straight story if you're interested.
4 - No More Than a Bubble by James Brinkley. A crazy story of one wild party night with African-American protagonists. Not sure what it was about.
5 - The Third Tower by Deborah Eisenberg. A subtle yet pithy post-ap tale. Minimalist? As many of them do, this one connects to both "1984" and "Brave New World."
6 - Hellion by Julia Elliott. A fine slice of rural Americana(S. Carolina) look-back from the child-life of a captivating young girl. Reminds of Karen Russell.
7 - Bronze by Jeffrey Eugenides. Read before in The New Yorker(2-5-2018). The theme of youthful sexual confusion is revisited(it was a major theme of "Middlesex"). Eugenides is a very fine writer.
8 - Protozoa by Ella Martinsen Gorham. A pungent tale of what it's like to be a captive of the internet. Not very encouraging.
9 - Seeing Ershadi by Nicole Krauss. First semi-stinker so far. I guess I'm not a big NK fan. Her stories appear regularly in the NYer. If she's there to take Alice Munro's place it's a big comedown ... IMHO. You have to dig young-ish female intellectualized angst to get her stuff. I just don't.
- "churred"???????? PLEASE don't be making up words!
10 - Pity and Shame by Ursula K. LeGuin. A different sort of story by a master. I wasn't that crazy about it. Nice cultural/geographic background - 19th c. Colorado and California.
11 - Anyone Can Do It by Manuel Munoz. Reminded me of Tortilla Flat only w/o the laughs.
12 - The Plan by Sigrid Nunez. Creepy ... might your next door neighbor, or your nephew even ...
12 - Letter of Apology by Maria Reva - Interesting to read but I have no idea what it's about.
13 - Black Corfu by Karen Russell - Ms Russell is a pretty famous writer these days and I have enjoyed a number of her stories, including one collection in book form. Not sure that I like this one all that well. It's a pretty intimate story of early 17th century weirdness on the island of Corfu. About a doctor of the undead and his resentment at being socially and medically stuck in place way down on the cultural ladder of Corfu because of his birth circumstances. A very "busy" tale ...
14 - Audition by Said Sayfrafiezadeh. A sort-of funny, sort-of horrifying tale of incipient drug addiction. From the New Yorker, but not remembered by me.
15 - Natural Disasters by Alexis Schaitkin. A Krauss-like story. Makes sense that I didn't much like it.
16 - Our Day of Grace by Jim Shepard. An epistolary tale from the South side in the Civil War just before the Battle of Franklin. As it happens I've read a book about that fight. Very nasty indeed. There's a definite hint of "The Red Badge of Courage."
17 - Wrong Object by Mona Simpson. Very strange story about a young therapist and her enigmatic patient, a man fixated on young girls and unable to feel love for an adult woman(his wife). The author tosses in a shout-out to both Poe and Nabokov by naming the man's ultimate love-lust-lost fixation Anna Li. The feel of this one will stay with you, especially if you're a guy who fell in love/obsession early and never got over it.
18 - They Told Us Not to Say This by Jenn Alandy Trahan. Seems like I read this one. According to the editor this story appeared in The Atlantic, not The New Yorker. I'll check it out( it was The Atlantic). Good story set within the small world of NoCal teenage Filipino girls. I had one major sex-lingo objection, however. Similar to my ambivalence about the "Oscar Wao" author and his gratuitous sex talk.
19 - Omakase by Weike Wang. Read before in The New Yorker. Ahhh, the challenge of being a finicky, super-sensitive person trying to be in an intimate relationship. To be fair, the boyfriend WAS kind of annoying.
- A worthy collection =- a solid 4* book. -
From the Introduction
”Last fall, when the indefatigable Heidi Pitlor sent me a first batch of forty stories, I dove right in. I had been reading lots of (very) dead writers—Sophocles, Homer, Ovid—and it was a delight to read stories involving Tinder and Lyft and underage cabbies and Jamaican grandmothers and John Updike’s sneakers in an oven.
Each time I’d start a new story, I’d get about two paragraphs in and see why Heidi selected it: it had a magnetic rhythm or an explosive opening or a spare beauty or a fabulous rain motif or a hobo-chic-transient-stalker-creep who looked vaguely like Brad Pitt. The hooks and the golden drug of narrative would flash through my nervous system.
By Thanksgiving I felt as though I had lucked into the best gig ever. I had a gifted, generous, and Herculean reader examining every short story published in North America and mailing me tear sheets of her favorites; I was discovering brilliant similes everywhere; I was meeting adulterous Alaskan moms and White House switchboard operators and nuns buying beehives. I kept thinking: There are so many brave voices sing out there!
It was mid-December when I remembered, Shit. I’m supposed to decide why some of these stories are better than the others. I panicked. I spent an entire morning constructing a spreadsheet; I built fields to score and summarize and evaluate, and in about fourteen seconds all the pleasure ribboned away.
Evaluating is a very different experience than enjoying, and I suppose this is true when it comes to parenting, traveling, eating, having sex, and reading short stories. Evaluating sucks. Evaluating turns eating a delicious piece of pie into homework.”
Anthony Doerr
If Anthony Doerr and my preference in short story exactly overlapped, then I would have been shocked right out of my shoes. I liked his introduction and some of the stories. Plenty enough.
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Generously provided by
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This is my first year reading the Best American Short Stories, after having gotten more into short stories over the last few years. I am not a fan of multi-author anthologies, finding them impossible to “get into” when each new story is like starting a new book, and that’s particularly true here, where there is no unifying theme. From reading a number of both brief and in-depth reviews of this collection and its stories, I have the sense this year wasn’t the best for this series. Many readers only connected with a couple of the stories, though Doerr must have done something right in selecting them when readers’ favorites seem to vary so widely. Looking through the top reviews on this page shows that while most readers only really liked a third or fewer of the stories, almost every story made somebody’s shortlist, with little consistency in which were the favorites. For me the only two standouts are “Letter of Apology” by Maria Reva and “Omakase” by Weike Wang, but I liked these enough that I now plan to read the authors’ books.
So, a rundown in order of appearance:
“The Era” by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah: The collection begins with a dystopian tale about a world in which kindness and human connection are despised, and the resulting hole is filled with constant injections of drugs. All this I think is astute commentary on certain trends in our society, but I found other elements – like the genetic engineering that sometimes goes wrong and gives people only one personality trait – rather less relevant, and like many insecure sci-fi stories, this one spends way too much time talking about why their values aren’t our values and how our world became theirs. It’s as if we went around talking about the Renaissance all the time and why we aren’t like those people; I’m not buying.
“Natural Light” by Kathleen Alcott: This is perhaps the most literary and best-written story in the collection, about a woman in her 30s who discovers something new about her deceased mother. I admire the author’s skill a lot, but her subject matter was too run-of-the-mill to interest me in reading more, and I still can’t figure out the ending; the last couple of sentences just seem like word salad to me. The story made more sense once
“The Great Interruption” by Wendell Berry: An entertaining boyhood escapade turns into a local legend, which is then used to comment on the demise of local culture in America. A well-written story, though Berry’s nostalgia for the rural America of yore is steeped in white male privilege, which though not acknowledged becomes visible at one point when the females privileged to hear the original story are referred to as the “housewives and big girls” of the community (it contained no other adult women).
“No More Than a Bubble” by Jamel Brinkley: Two college boys crash a party with the goal of hooking up with a pair of slightly older women, and wind up way out of their depth. It’s a vividly told tale but I didn’t really know what to make of this one. The problematic aspects of the boys’ sexuality are clearly acknowledged, but I didn’t know how to reconcile Ben’s
“The Third Tower” by Deborah Eisenberg: In a vaguely-sketched dystopian world, the medical system tries to stamp out the creativity and possibly repressed memories of government-sponsored horror from the mind of a young woman. This one was a little too on-the-nose for me, and Therese’s gullibility and eager compliance made it harder for me to have strong feelings about what was being done to her.
“Hellion” by Julia Elliott: An adolescent girl in rural South Carolina befriends a visiting boy, and unfortunate consequences follow from their actions. It’s sweet enough I suppose, but what Doerr cites as its exuberance and courage, for me was just over-the-top in a way that seems almost careless: the character referred to as having grown up “before the Civil War” early enough in the story that we don’t yet realize this isn’t meant literally (it’s set in the 1980s or thereabouts); the young female narrator going off on a sudden tangent about people killing the planet when she’d never before mentioned an interest in science or ecology and again, it’s the 1980s. It all felt a bit haphazard to me, and the grounding in serious questions about whether this girl has a shot at a fulfilling life wasn’t quite enough to draw it back.
“Bronze” by Jeffrey Eugenides: A gender-nonconforming freshman meets an older gay man on the train home to college from New York, and has to finally decide whether he’s actually gay and if not, whether his self-expression is worth letting people read him that way. Interesting enough but didn’t do much for me, though I did find it interesting that Eugenides developed the older man, who without getting a point-of-view would have just been a standard creep.
“Protozoa” by Ella Martinsen Gorham: A 14-year-old girl tries to establish her self-identity in both the real and virtual worlds. Doerr perhaps sells this one short by calling it a cautionary tale about the amount of investment teens put into their online lives; in many ways Noa seems to live more in the real world than a lot of teens (she interacts with quite a few people in real life over the course of the story), and I found myself thinking that the cautionary message might have been sent more effectively. But I’m not sure the author actually intended the story as anything so simple: what might have been portrayed as traumatizing cyberbullying in another story, Noa seems perfectly well-equipped to handle and even in some ways to welcome, while her real story is about trying to establish herself as someone darker and edgier.
“Seeing Ershadi” by Nicole Krauss: A dancer and her friend both attribute newfound motivation to leave bad situations to visions of actor Homayoun Ershadi. This one didn’t really do anything for me. It seems to have a hole at its center: we hear a lot about the plot of the Iranian film Taste of Cherry, and a lot about the narrator’s friend’s life, while the narrator’s own life and decisions are sidelined. It is sweet though that according to the author’s note at the end, Ershadi read and was touched by the story at a difficult point in his own life.
“Pity and Shame” by Ursula Le Guin: An outcast young woman in a late 19th century California mining town cares for a lonely mine engineer injured in an accident, and the two of them and a doctor all form a bond. A sweet story but not one that leaves the reader with much to think about, despite the author’s legendary status.
“Anyone Can Do It” by Manuel Muñoz: A young mother struggles to figure out how to pay the bills when her husband, along with other farmworkers, is suddenly snatched by immigration. Timely, certainly, though set in the 1980s rather than the present, and the author adds some complexity in that, for instance, Delfina doesn’t actually seem to like or miss her husband much. But she was a bit of a hollow character that was hard for me to root for, and
“The Plan” by Sigrid Nunez: Inside the mind of a killer. Interesting enough, but didn’t do much for me.
“Letter of Apology” by Maria Reva: In late Soviet Ukraine, a KGB agent is required to extract a letter of apology from a renowned poet for making a political joke. The agent, who narrates the story, is in denial about certain aspects of his own life, leading him to wildly misinterpret the behavior of the poet’s wife. I loved this one: there’s a ton of humor in the contrast between the dread image of the KGB and the reality of the bumbling and confused Mikhail, as well as the absurdities of the system as a whole. The whole story is full of dark humor and the changes wrought in both Mikhail and Milena seemed very real and sympathetic to me. I was excited to find that the author has also published this as part of a whole collection of linked short stories.
“Black Corfu” by Karen Russell: On a Croatian island in 1620, ruled at the time from Venice, a black man wanted to be a doctor but is permitted only to cut the hamstrings of the dead, meant to prevent them from rising again as less-violent zombies, known as vukodlak. He’s falsely accused of botching a procedure – or is the accusation really false? This was my first exposure to an author who’s gotten a lot of buzz lately, and the story hits a lot of buttons in terms of racial prejudice and glass ceilings, but didn’t actually work well for me.
“Audition” by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh: A young man who wants to be an actor instead, for unspecified reasons, works on construction sites owned by his father, a real estate developer, and seems to be falling under the spell of crack. This didn’t do much for me.
“Natural Disasters” by Alexis Schaitkin: A young New Yorker moves to Oklahoma with her husband, where she takes a job writing descriptions of houses for sale and tries to fit everything that happens into some meaningful narrative of her life. I enjoyed the narrator’s voice, her obvious pretention and her adult awareness of it when telling the story from the vantage point of many years later, but I was underwhelmed and unconvinced by the “big event.”
“Our Day of Grace” by Jim Shepard: An epistolary story about the American Civil War: two southern women write letters to two Confederate soldiers, one of whom writes back. The letters are credible enough but the Civil War has also been pretty well done to death as a setting, and in my view this didn’t do anything new or exciting.
“Wrong Object” by Mona Simpson: A therapist treats a man who at first seems boring, but then reveals that he only experiences sexual attraction to adolescent girls, though he insists he’s never acted upon it. This is interesting, but perhaps too short for me. I would have liked to know a little more about the therapist’s life, which is only vaguely hinted at, and to have seen the consequences at the end developed a little more. But the existence of people seeking treatment for pedophilia who have never acted on their urges was not new information to me, which may have blunted my reaction to the story.
“They Told Us Not To Say This” by Jenn Alandy Trahan: Blink and you’ll miss this 7-page story, told in the first person plural about a group of second-generation Filipina-American girls who are second-class in their families but find empowerment on the basketball court. This is the one story no reviewer seems to have highlighted as a favorite, and I can see why not.
“Omakase” by Weike Wang: A Chinese-American woman in her late 30s goes out for omakase (in Japanese, “I’ll leave it up to you”; in restaurants, sushi selected by the chef) with her white boyfriend, who increasingly shows his obliviousness about racial issues and his dismissive and condescending attitude toward her, despite the fact that she’s the one to do most of the sacrificing and pay most of the bills in their relationship. It’s interesting to see the widely varied responses that reviewers have had, some feeling that all the ways in which the woman is marginalized and put down in the world and within her own relationship to be too stereotypical, while others seem to take the boyfriend’s opinions at face value and view her as too sensitive and neurotic for her own good. Those varying responses are certainly a testament to the realism of the story. She is a bit neurotic, but to me much of this is the conflict generated by her instincts telling her she’s in a bad situation, while everyone around her (boyfriend, family, friends) insists that the only problem is her – thereby robbing her of the sense of self-worth she needs to actually stand up for herself. She comes across as real and vibrant, as do the racial issues addressed, and I’m interested in reading Wang’s novel.
Overall, an interesting collection of stories I don’t regret reading, but that took me a really long time to get through. I’m not sure if I’ll try another of these collections, but I did at least discover a couple of promising authors. -
Since this is a collection of 20 stories, it's a bit challenging to think of how to review it. Here's a general overview.
In 2019, a friend actually turned me on to this series of anthologies commonly referred to as BASS. I guess it's been out since the early 1900's and they started the "guest editor" editions in 1978. Each book contains 20 stories from American and Canadian authors. This particular edition featured Anthony Doerr as guest editor, the person who selects which stories will be included. My friend saw a short story by Wendell Berry and thought I would enjoy. I loved it. I also love Doerr. I have since read 19 of the 20 and I bought some previous years of the BASS series! (The only one I couldn't read was "Black Corfu". 1600s zombies style??? Too weird!).
I noticed one of the Goodreads readers did a beautiful job of reviewing EACH of the 20 stories! So organized and helpful. Other reviewers selected highlights or favorite authors. One of the cool things about a series like this is there is something for everyone. And readers seem to have such different approaches to a book like this. Some just picking and choosing certain stories or certain authors. Others powering through and reading each one in order. I think that's the beauty of this. You can come and go as you please, and revisit old, favorite authors and perhaps discover new favorites. And I surprised myself - two genres I don't really care for in a NOVEL: dystopia and murder/thriller, were 2 of the best in a SHORT STORY format! "The Era" by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah and "The Plan" by Sigrid Nunez. Another interesting note is that even though I love Jeffrey Eugenides, his short story, "Bronze", did not hit home with me as his novels do. So go figure!
Another great feature - at the end of the book they include a short bio on each writer and a comment by the writer on how they constructed the particular short story included in the anthology.
A list of my own stand-outs in the order they appear in the book (mainly as a reminder for myself to revisit and/or seek out more by this author:
"The Era" - Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
"The Great Interruption" - Wendell Berry
"No More Than a Bubble" - Jamel Brinkley
"Pity and Shame" - Ursula K LeGuin
"Anyone Can Do It" - Manuel Munoz
"The Plan" - Sigrid Nunez
"Natural Disasters" - Alexis Schaitkin
"Our Day of Grace" - Jim Shepard
"Omakase" - Weike Wang -
I guess when he literally just straight out admits in the introduction that he's only going to include rambling plotless stories, I should have known how it would be. Also what is it with "up and coming writers" where EVERY SINGLE STORY has to be based in New York?
It gave me flashbacks of being 17 and having to read our creative writing out loud in a circle for class. There's definitely a very obvious "majored in creative writing" way of writing and it turns out I hate it -
There are many reasons I look forward to the annual collection of Best American Short Stories; it helps keep me out of reading ruts of reading the same type of fiction, it introduces me to new writers causing me to order their books(but never on Amazon), updates me on favorite writers. It also reminds me of my dislike certain types of writing; dystopian stories have greatly improved by skimming skills.
Some of my favorites from this year's collection:
Wendell Berry's "The Great Interruption" recalls a time when spare time, story telling, carefree adventures had a bigger place in our lives, the nostalgia for those times is enhanced by the narrator telling the story years after the fact after he has moved from his small town.
"No More than a Bubble" by James Brinkley takes place in 1990s New York with two Black college students crashing a party of young professionals. As the narrator progresses through the night he routinely reflects about his dad and his advice "to be aware of crazy women, angry women, passionate women. He told me they would ruin me.'But they are also the best women' he said 'The best lovers, with a jungle between their legs and such wildness in bed that every man should experience." The narrator does end up with such a women that night, in describing how they picked the women "We both preferred girls with a certain plumpness, with curves--in part, I think, because that's what black guy are supposed to like, because liking it felt like a confirmation of possessing black blood, a way to stamp ourselves with authenticity."
"Protoza" by Ellen Martinsen Gorham with the story by Wendell Berry exemplifies the collection's diversity; contrasted by Berry's tale of old fashioned gossip and spare time, Gorham's story features 8th graders in Los Angeles where life, even passionate teenage petting, seems only an excuse to take to social media to describe, to bully, to defend.
Ursula Le Guin's "Pity and Shame" tells of a different time, a young woman in a Gold Rush town, is paid to care for a victim of a mining accident. As the story progresses we learn what brought her to the isolated town, the future of the town, and the unlikely friendship between the caring doctor and well educated accident victim.
"Anyone Can Do it" by Manuel Munoz will stay with me the longest of any of these stories. The description of a migrant worker's wife's life when she learns that her husband and others don't return from work, with hopes steadily giving way to the harshness of an immigration raid. As reality sets in she makes plans for her two young children in a place far away from her home.
"Letter of Apology" by Maria Reva seems at times Orwellian in its story of a post Stalinist time when dissent was to be handled differently than the prior methods of sending dissenters to camps. Here a KGB agent is assigned to getting a letter of apology from a poet for his politically unacceptable joke made during one of his popular readings.
"Natural Disasters" by Alexis Schaitkin tells of a young professional couple moving from New York City to the middle of Oklahoma where the husband works for oil company and the writer/wife looking to adjust. The wife's experience with a coming tornado with an escape into a storm cellar cements the contrast with her prior life.
Mona Simpson's "Wrong Object" about a psychologist's counseling of a successful and married man who eventually reveals his underlying issue, attraction to young girls, provoked me enough to reach out to an expert in the field, because the story was so real, so nuanced. -
Notes mostly for myself here, as readers don't need to be encouraged to pick up The Best American Short Stories' annual collection; these collections are a touchstone for those of us who enjoy short stories and you'll either check it out or not.
Proof in point: I read the 2019 volume strictly because of my devotion to Anthony Doerr and was curious about what kind of stories he finds entertaining/intriguing.
I liked the exposure to some legendary authors; Ursula K. Le Guin's "Pity and Shame" was a real standout - 3-dimensional characters living in a rugged landscape, all propped up on her beautiful writing. I am DYING to talk to someone about the 3rd person-to-1st person switch up in the last two paragraphs of Wendell Berry's "The Great Interruption...", gave me whiplash with such a tone change and made the entire story read different.
Some new voices that I'll keep a keen eye on now; Jamel Brinkley's "No More Than a Bubble" is probably the story I come back and think about the most. What does that dog scene symbolize, and did the two boys have sex at the end? Julia Elliott's "Hellion" was such a blast to read -more of her in my life, please! Manuel Munoz's "Anyone Can Do It" broke my heart so bad I have to remind myself that it's fiction in order to cope. -
Highly Opinionated Review--en garde!
When I started working toward a certificate in writing at UCLA Extension, I immediately realized how little American fiction I read. The instructors do not, as a rule, assign translated fiction or even much English language works from the UK or India. It has been interesting re-reading stuff I read in high school, like Flannery O'Connor, Joyce Carol Oates, Cheever, Hemingway and Fitzgerald. It has also been interesting reading contemporary short-stories. Regarding learning the craft of fiction, I think it is important to understand what you like and what you don't like, since your taste will be what fuels your own work.
And my taste is definitely not American.
The problem is I am not a big fan of character-driven stories--especially those by women as they tend to go in heavy into feelings and the character's inner world, which for whatever reason, doesn't interest me. Anis Shivani wrote a great book years back about the situation in US publishing called Against the Workshop. It is basically about the way the MFA programs in the last thirty years or so have come to absolutely dominate publishing. And part of the reason why American fiction is so flat is due to the tenets pushed by these programs, which no matter how you slice it, seem to be pushing a type of "product."
This product can be described as aiming toward psychological realism (which ironically has nothing in common to how people actually think) and is something I would describe being closer to approaching a screenplay. Also, the work exists in a kind of vacuum without any reference whatsoever to other works of art. Because of the
CIA's involvement in the early day's of Iowa, it is no surprise that writing cut off from movements of any kind and that prioritize individual expressions and confessionals about trauma and overcoming came to be the ticket. This last thing has led to a kind of commodification of trauma, which can be very sad to see--that is, while I think it can stand in for therapy and can be hugely helpful to people, it also has led to a depressing situation of people engaging in black and white victimization narratives and a culture of blame.
For my class we used Best American Short Stories 2019 . I found all the stories to be uninteresting with one big exception: Karen Russell's Black Corfu. This story was not assigned but it was in the textbook--so on a whim I read it and was totally bowled over!
I would say she is a great genius. I went on to buy her book Orange World and enjoyed it immensely. Weike Wang's "Omakase" and Maria Reva's "Letter of Apology" were also great stories. Reva especially, like Russell, writes in a style that references other works of art and is not a deep dive into a subjective experience. Wang's reads like memoir... and so many of the stories in this book read like memoir. I am wondering about this current aesthetic to write fiction as if it is a memoir. Real memoir is tedious enough, but shouldn't fiction aim to being art? And no, unless you are WG Sebald or Emmanuel Carrère, I don't think your memoir is art.
Other articles of interest
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertain...
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n... -
When I wrote my opening post for this year’s volume (the tenth time I've blogged BASS), I admitted I was worried since the bar was set so high by last year’s edition, and the couple of years before. And yes, this year felt like a bit of a letdown. In terms of expectations, maybe it was something like a stock market correction. Still, there’s something to find in all these stories, even though none of them blew my socks off.
What’s interesting is that, while I was a bit meh about many of them while reading, some of them grew on me over time. I’m not sure why that is; maybe some connection finally snapped into place, or maybe I just acclimated to a lower level of stimulation. The two stories I liked most while first-time reading both use humor. A couple introduced me to foreign films, both of which were available on Youtube. And a few seemed related to my current obsession, Don Quixote, though that connection might me all in my mind.
It’s interesting that Doerr’s Introduction – which I still say is the most charming in years – focuses on rule-breaking. None of these stories, or the broken rules, struck me as particularly innovative or unusual. I don’t expect every story to be a new experience – that would be silly – but I did miss that moment of “oh, wow, look what she did here” that BASS often contains. Maybe I’ll see it differently in time.
FMI see my blog
posts for each story at A Just Recompense. -
Two of the stories in this anthology stood out for me. One was Nicole Krauss’s “Seeing Ershadi,” which is characterized by an incredible flow, that is, a structure where the sections jump around in time and place, but seem organic, work without any hitch. I will certainly reread it a few times to see how Krauss constructed it. The other is Ella Martinsen Gorham’s “Protozoa,” a story of eighth graders, the kind of story that, contentwise and stylewise (dialogue that is too realistic, texting, etc.), I can’t stand, but Martinsen Gorham does it so well, she kept me reading to the end. That is a great accomplishment.
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It's a good collection. The first story was my favourite, but there were many gems throughout.
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I am amazed at how much story these talented authors can get into a few pages!
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As a professional writer, I do my best to keep up with short stories in literary magazines and The New Yorker (which is impossible since it's almost weekly.) That said, I like to read the books in this series because these stories are considered the best of the best. Each volume has a guest editor who reviews stories chosen by the series editor. (No, the guest editor doesn't actually read *every* short story published in the U.S./Canadian market before making selections. You can read about this in the book, if you don't believe me.) Given all of this, my appraisal of this installment doesn't affect whether or not I will read or buy the next one, but if you have the option, I would pass, if I were you. Short a few highlights, this isn't a stellar collection.
This collection includes one story by
Ursula K. Le Guin, who is no longer with us. I have mixed feelings about talking about dead authors because some people have a complex about that. You can criticize anyone as long as they're still around to have suicidal thoughts about it, but once they're dead, everything is sacred. I actually thought her story was decent, and completely confusing. It was also set in the mining country in Colorado, for the most part, and that was interesting and pedestrian at the same time because I live in Colorado. A lot of people in Colorado find the place infinitely fascinating when many other fascinating places exist. However, if you're writing about a mining accident, as she was, it does make sense, so I can't fault her on that. All I can say is, hey, try reading it and tell me just how entertaining you thought it was.
Julia Elliott's Hellion from The Georgia Review appears in here, and it is an excellent example of strong story, character, and voice. She also deftly makes the ordinary occurrences of every day life that so many of us take for granted extraordinary, and she does so without pretense. That story is truly something that belongs on anyone's list of Best American Short Stories.
The rest of the stories had some highs and lows for me. Mostly, I found some snippets of brilliant writing hidden within a lump of pretension and no plot. As a reader who never was interested in getting published, I would just stop reading and go about my life with most of those. The frustrating part is that I have to get work critiqued and take the feedback seriously, and I have to hear all the stupid theories people have about why something will never be published---yet, here we have plenty of examples of things that should not be published, and they're the best of the best.
In my opinion, a piece that is clearly set in the 90s should be historical, at this point. At least one story, but I believe it's actually two, is (are) clearly set in the 90s and the story isn't qualified in any way as historical. You may be thinking, "Oh you're just being petty now." People probably are just being petty picking at things like this, but I know that if I submitted a story that included references to The Wherehouse or a Walkman, I would get feedback along the lines of, "This is SO dated. Nobody is going to read this."
Maybe the reality is that if you're a writer, if whatever you're writing is what you believe to be your best work, ignore the silly things your critique partners say that bring you down. Trust your instincts on setting and style because someone out there will probably think it's amazing.
Of course, you may be wondering, why didn't I say those stories were amazing. Honestly, I didn't think they were that amazing, but not because of anything being dated. My issue is I can't even remember the titles or authors of those other stories because they didn't leave much of an impression on me beyond thinking, "Wow. Fellow critiques would have jumped all over me for this." If I'd actually enjoyed them, I would have remembered more than that. Lots of, "Yes, I'm a cool writer because I can write about attending a party where someone came home with me based on actual experience" posturing. Most of us can get drunk, take drugs, and get laid. If you can't, I'm sorry, but for the most part, it's not a challenge to do any of those things. Why am I supposed to think that's interesting? I get that Hemingway did it a lot, but he's dead. Jack Kerouac did too and he's also dead. Most people don't read either of them for fun, so maybe the public is trying to tell us something with that.
Anyway, as far as this book goes, some editions are great. This one is meh, much like the year it represents. Maybe it's a good commentary in that sense. -
Hit or miss, like most of these collections. From awful to mesmerizing, and of course my mesmerizing may be your awful. One thing I look for in these yearly collections is to hear current authors writing about our culture today. There was enough of that here to work for me. Best of the best by Nicole Krauss and Alexis Schaitkin.
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Coming off the joyously chaotic diversity and daring of last year’s Roxane Gay curated edition, this Anthony Doerr picked collection is a huge disappointment, even though it’s clear the he was going for diverse voices as well. Its possibly the weakest of the collections of any year I’ve read. Not only are most of the stories dour and off-putting, very few of them have anything interesting or new to say. A handful of stories I even skipped based on the first few paragraphs.
Of course, with any collection, even the worst of them, there is always something to pick from the rubble. What’s frustrating is that even some of the interesting stories, like “Natural Disasters” from Alexis Schaitkin and “Wrong Object” by Mona Simpson seemed to work overtime to include off-putting elements in otherwise well-crafted tales.
The only real standouts were the opener “The Era” from Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, a satirical look at our pre-programmed future, and Manuel Munoz’s “Anyone Can Do It,” a humanist and timeless story about the plight of migrant workers, their fragile situations but internal fortitude. Even in a better collection, these would’ve been memorable.
But honestly, that’s it. Just two stories worth your time. I recommend finding these online or in their original publications and skipping the rest of the collection. -
Curated by Anthony Doerr (ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE), 2019's shorts were selected with an eye towards breaking the rules of form: multiple protagonists, pages of exposition, ambling subplots, unlikable narrators. In theory it's an exciting approach, yet while none are outright failures, many read like style in search of substance. Or where there was substance, the style was less remarkable. My favorites fell into the latter camp, particularly this top five:
"Anyone Can Do It," Manual Munoz -- A timely immigration story that generates pathos through escalating dread.
"Letter of Apology," Maria Reva -- In one of the funniest (and grimmest) entries, a KGB official must extract the title object from a poet who made a political joke.
"Natural Disasters," Alexis Schaitkin -- A city girl moves to Oklahoma and finds work copywriting fluff about real estate. The ending is a quiet stunner that doubles as a persuasive argument for short fiction as a whole.
"Wrong Object," Mona Simpson -- A therapist stretches her limits of empathy when a boring patient reveals a disturbing pathology.
"Omakase," Weike Wang -- A nameless couple dines out for the titular meal, one that brims with white privilege, gaslighting, and other 2019 anxieties.
'Til next year! -
I only enjoyed a couple of the short stories out of twenty. I have no idea how these are ranked the best. Clearly the curator has a different reading preference than myself. I know someone has to enjoy this but it was not me.
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I don’t think I can rate this one because the collection was so hit or miss, but the Ursula le Guin story (“Pity and Shame”) made the whole thing worth it - gorgeous, Munro-esque characters, then a magical twist
I never expected (had to re-read to see if I’d missed signs). -
Well, that's a wrap! I've officially read (and taken notes on) every story in every guest-edited BASS to date†. That's, what... 857 stories over 5.25 years and 42 volumes? And 106,964 words of notes?! Holy moly. It's truly strange to finally be arriving at the finish line. I just finished the last story a few minutes ago, so the expected feelings—pride, relief, emptiness—haven't really had a chance to emerge yet. Mostly I just feel a little stunned!
Anyway, the 2019 edition. Frankly, anything would have been an improvement on 2018, but this one did feel like a genuine recovery in most respects. Not a perfect BASS by any means, but satisfyingly typical: that is, there were some bad stories, some okay ones, several very good ones, and—thankfully—some great ones. Favorites in rough order of preference:
* Wendell Berry - "The Great Interruption: The Story of a Famous Story of Old Port William and How It Ceased To Be Told (1935–1978)"
* Jeffrey Eugenides - "Bronze"
* Mona Simpson - "Wrong Object"
* Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah - "The Era"
And some honorable mentions:
* Karen Russell - "Black Corfu"
* Nicole Krauss - "Seeing Ershadi"
* Maria Reva - "Letter of Apology"
* Jamel Brinkley - "No More Than a Bubble"
* Jim Shepard - "Our Day of Grace"
† An honor I can revel in until roughly November 3rd, when the 2020 BASS comes out. :) -
This collection was more or less my first foray into short stories. As can only be expected, there were some that spoke to me and resonated deeply, and some of which I just wasn’t a fan. Editor Anthony Doerr speaks about breaking rules and boundaries in his introduction, and some of the included authors did this with grace, humor, and meaning. Perhaps I’m just not a fan of postmodern fiction, but there were some stories in this collection that broke the rules in ways that were off putting or just confusing. Maybe that lack of understanding is on me as a reader, and no story can speak to everyone, but not every short story in this collection lasted in my mind the way they all did for Doerr. Even so, this wide-ranging collection, tackling everything from immigrant workers to pedophilia, brought together many incredible authors and imparted some lasting lessons about writing as well.
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The first 4 or 5 stories were not enjoyable for me so I skimmed over them. They were not a style or genre I like. The remaining stories were interesting, diverse, and reminded me of why I have always liked reading short stories. I was glad I continued reading as I almost gave up after the initial disappointment in this collection. It's been a few years since I picked up the yearly Great American Short Stories collection. I need to make it an annual read again.
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For me, the standout stories are “Natural Light” by Kathleen Alcott, “Hellion” by Julia Elliott, “Bronze” by Jeffrey Eugenides, “Anyone Can Do It” by Manuel Muñoz, “The Plan” by Sigrid Nunez, “Letter of Apology” by Maria Reva, “Black Corfu” by Karen Russell, and “Wrong Object” by Mona Simpson.
The stories that will stick with me the most are “Letter of Apology” and, my favorite, “Black Corfu”. -
Enjoyed this collection—I star each story I want to read again when I go through books of short stories and this one was 9/21 which is pretty good. Best two were “The Great Interruption”, “Anyone Can Do It”, and “The Plan.”
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This is an oddly disappointing collection of short stories from January 2018 through January 2019. There’s a few outstanding pieces, such as “Hellion” by Julia Elliot and, of course, Ursula K. Le Guin’s lovely story about old age, but mostly a lot of these pieces are lacking connection and feel like chapters from a book rather than a story of its own.
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Stand outs-
“Black Corfu” by Karen Russell
“Natural Light” by Kathleen Alcott
“Hellion” by Julia Elliot
