The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story by John Freeman

The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story Reviews

• 
  Claire Fuller

  My librarian husband and I have started a project (we like projects). Every day for past 37 days we have read one of these stories to each other, marked them out of five, and talked about what we thought about them - what we felt worked and what didn't. Surprisingly perhaps, we were mostly agreed: those that scored five usually got a five from both of us. And there were three that we were completely agreed on to stop reading because we weren't enjoying them. Unfortunately there were quite a few that neither of us liked, and those that we loved were by authors we generally already knew and loved: Raymond Carver, Joy Williams, Denis Johnson, George Saunders, and Lauren Groff. But there were also a few stories by authors that which have already inspired us to go and read more of their short fiction, including Stuart Dybek, Tobia Wolff, and Julie Otsuka. Thanks to Eric Anderson for the inspiration for this project. We're going to read a short story collection, rather than anthology, next. But which one...?
• 
  Joy

  Penguin has put together a solid collection of the names and texts to know in short fiction from 1972 to the present. Editor John Freeman provides insight into the thematic trends that flow through the texts in his introduction. While most of the included works from the 20th century can be found in many anthologies, the stories from the year 2000 to the end of the book feel fresh and engaging. Freeman has captured a range of voices and genres with authors that are easily recognizable from contemporary best-selling lists. The book could easily be used in a secondary or post-secondary academic setting and would be equally appropriate as a general read. There is a brief biographical note about each author in the final pages, but the stories are absolutely the stars of this anthology.
  
  Thank you to John Freeman, Penguin Books, and NetGalley for an Advance Reader Copy in exchange for an honest review
• 
  F.

  … Ashley put down his chopsticks, glanced at the cat, pointed to the man, and said: “Kill, Doris. Kill!”

  
  
  Not the best collection. Most of the stories reminded me why I hated doing my MFA. But a couple of good ones stuck in my mind, barring “The Midnight Zone” by Lauren Groff and “Story” by Lydia Davis since I had already read them before:
  
  “Bicycles, Muscles, Cigarettes” by Raymond Carver (Carver has such a way of escalating and ending a story—if you haven’t already read “Popular Mechanics,” please do.)
  
  “Taking Care” by Joy Williams
  
  “The Twenty-Seventh Man” by Nathan Englander
  
  “Diem Perdidi” by Julie Otsuka
• 
  Mark

  I don't often read short stories, but I enjoyed this collection, which spans a period from 1972 to 2019.
  
  With the exception of a couple authors whose works have never connected with me, I read everything, and I was glad I did. Of course, any short story anthology will be a mixed bag, because the styles and approaches and even length vary widely.
  
  It included pieces I had read before on both the good and bad side. Tom O'Brien's Vietnam War saga, the Things They Carried, remained powerful and moving. Karen Russell's St. Lucy's Home For Girls Raised By Wolves, about girls raised by werewolf parents who are being trained to become human, was just as show-offy and inconsequential as I remembered.
  
  Beyond that, I'll mention four:
  
  * The Dune, by Stephen King, is an almost perfect mixture of stemwinder and horror story, worthy of the O'Henry tradition.
  
  * The Fix, by Percival Everett, is a highly realistic surrealistic tale, if that's possible, and it raises disturbing questions about what we want in our saviors.
  
  * Diem Perdidi, by Julie Otsuka, is one of the best short depictions of dementia and its consequences I've ever read.
  
  * Anyone Can Do It, by Manuel Munoz, is a tale about a woman whose migrant worker husband may have been picked up by immigration authorities, and who reluctantly agrees to help a neighbor pick peaches. From this simple tale comes a story of faith, poverty, motherhood and betrayal.
  
  
• 
  Ceriel

  As with any anthology, it is easy to find fault with the material selected, the choices made, the criteria clung to. Anthologies are hardly ever exhaustive, and neither is this one. It doesn’t, however, claim to be.
  
  The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story sketches a literary landscape and captures a mere moment of American letters, from 1972 through 2019. It can only gesture at the whole, at the continent – the culture – pulsing behind and (sometimes) through the prose, and that is fine. And, perhaps, the point. It is a selection of stories, after all, that bundles voices, decades, genres, backgrounds, styles, histories, &c.
  
  I commend Penguin and the book’s editor John Freeman for curating a selection of short stories that strives to capture this diverse discipline in celebration of its variety. It led me to stories and authors I might not otherwise have encountered or considered.
• 
  Jess

  Really liked most of them, but they started to slowly loose their individuality after reading 4-5 in a row. The "American" voice is shown pretty clearly in almost all these stories, and it's structured in a way where there's exposure to enough variety so that it doesn't become repetitive.
  I didn't finish all the stories but sampled a few from each time period.
• 
  Kelly_Hunsaker_reads ...

  Thank you to Penguin for sending me the finished copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. I bought the audiobook to listen while I read and I am really glad I did as each story has a unique narrator and was cast perfectly. I give the audio production 5 stars.
  
  While I enjoyed many of these stories, and really liked the fact that they were in chronological order, I wished there was more of a central, identifiable theme that tied the collection together. Some of the stories seemed to capture the time it was written while others were more general. Some authors are known well within certain genres and others not. I am not a knowledgeable reader of short stories, so my view is by no means an educated one, and look forward to seeing the thoughts and impressions of other readers.
• 
  Steve

  
  Of the almost 40 short stories in this collection, there are a few that stood out:
  
  The Twenty-Seventh Man by Nathan Englander
  
  Bullet in the Brain by Tobias Wolff
  
  A Temporary Matter by Jhumpa Lahiri
  
  The Fix by Percival Everett
  
  The Dune by Stephen King
  
  There are probably a few more that were somewhat enjoyable and one or two that I skipped altogether.
  
  I like short stories, though. A short story is like a bite size book that one can enjoy with not much of an investment of time or effort. Life is too busy, at least in my mind, to latch onto one epic novel after another. I truly admire readers who have that capacity. But I also admire writers that can start, tell, and finish a story in a few pages. It shows they have honed their craft. They can get the reader from "once upon a time" to "happily ever after" over the course of a lunch break while evoking emotion in the reader and leaving them with a thought or memory they can carry around with them for the rest of the day.
  
  Some writers are good at telling epic tales in 500 to 1000 page novels; and some of those are very good tales. To me, a collection of short stories is like a holiday dinner, where you put a spoonful of each kind of food on your plate, and then hurry to your place at the table to enjoy them all, one by one, noting the one you liked best, and maybe going back for more.
  
  The 'modern' stories in this book took some effort to appreciate. The classic authors: Poe, Aesop, King (he has a good one in this collection), Vonnegut, Kafka, they could all write fiction that let the reader develop their own emotion about the story; they left mystery in the mystery and hope was a thing hoped for. These modern stories work overtime creating a pseudo-emotionally-charged story, assuming the reader will feel every bit of it and relate without question. It just seemed forced and too intentional--like the actors in Hollywood standing up at the Oscars, offering obligatory applause for themselves and each other. In hearing the stories, you will hear/feel the writer writing the words, when you should be hearing/feeling the character's plight and personality. These stories, at least a good many of them, were written like a feature for a radio news magazine, like something you would hear on NPR, if that makes any sense.
  
  The narrators narrated. Some of them had thick accents that were not pleasant to listen to. I gave it 2 stars. That's only on the strength of a few stories, King's being one of them. Sorry, but I just couldn't get enthused about this book.
  
  Perhaps I'm becoming a curmudgeon.
• 
  Jack Mcloone

  Not rating this one because I’m coming to realize literary fiction short stories just aren’t my thing (hence taking so long to complete).
  
  I picked this up from the library pretty much entirely because I wanted to read “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin, which did live up to its reputation. Some other standouts:
  
  - “A Conversation with My Father” by Grace Paley (a very inventive way to tell a story within a story)
  - “The Red Convertible” by Louise Erdrich (a fiction-as-metaphor that didn’t feel as overwrought as some (many tbh) do to me)
  - “China” by Charles Johnson (a fascinating exploration of the way an older couple can still surprise each other and, in the process, come apart and maybe together again)
  - “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien (I’ve read this one before, and it such a great story device)
  - “The American Embassy” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (a compelling portrait of grief both personal and societal)
  - “The Paper Menagerie” by Ken Liu (fantastical realism to tell a heartbreaking story of how children and their parents grapple with living lives as “others”)
  
  
  A cool idea for a collection largely without theme with a number of more genre stories (sci-fi and horror, though the King short story falls kind of flat for me) that also loses a little only being organized by date and not say, themes or genre.
• 
  Zibby Owens

  This collection of short stories spans from 1970 to 2020 and includes some of the most well-established writers in different genres spanning those decades. As a seasoned anthologist, Freeman has assembled a fantastic book. And if you like audiobooks, the stories are read by an all-star cast.
  
  There were some real surprises in this anthology, particularly regarding what stories have stood the test of time. New authors and stories sometimes won out over classic writers considered the best writers of their time and style. One of the greatest perks in reading this collection was reading a story in one sitting. There is something so satisfying, especially for moms who don’t have time to read, about the sense of accomplishment that comes from finding time to read something start to finish without interruptions. These stories gave me just that feeling.
  
  To listen to my interview with the author, go to my podcast at:
  https://zibbyowens.com/transcript/joh...
  
• 
  Raluca

  A stronger collection than other anthologies I've read, or maybe the stories just hit better at this particular time. A couple of standouts:
  - The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, Ursula K. Le Guin - not so much a story with a moral as directly a moral, but what beautiful delirium takes you to it
  - The Flowers, Alice Walker - did not see that coming
  - The Way We Live Now, Susan Sontag - maybe the fact that it seems to drag on is part of the point? Such a matter-of-fact portrait of everyday pain and living with it
  - Silence, Lucia Berlin - that ending kicks you in the 'nads
  - Bullet in the Brain, Tobias Wolff - one of the best vignettes I've ever, EVER read
  - A Temporary Matter, Jhumpa Lahiri - yes, she remains one of my favorite writers, because of pieces like this one
  - The Fix, Percival Everett - yeah, this is exactly how this would go if it were real
  - The Last Thing We Need, Claire Vaye Watkins - what a great spin on the oft-gimmicky epistolary trick
• 
  Beth

  4.5 stars. This was a really well done compilation of stories from 1970-2020. John Freeman's introduction had some thoughts on each story to help contextualize them, and they were in order by year with the date of publication given (thank you!). I am a huge short story fan, and though I was familiar with all of the authors, I had not read all of these stories. I finally read some classics I hadn't gotten around to (The Lesson by Toni Cade Bambara and The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin), reread some of my favorites (The Way We Live Now and Bullet in the Brain), and was reminded of some authors I need to look into further (Lydia Davis and Ken Liu).
  
  
  
  
• 
  Julia Bucci

  "Kiki crowded close to her knees, even in the heat of the afternoon, and so she popped the cap of the second bottle to take a sip herself and to ask her little boy of no words to tell where he thought the older girl had gone, of where he dreamed his father was. Dígame, she said, asking him to tell her a whole story, but Kiki had already taken the little metal car from his pocket and he was showing her, starting from the crook of his arm, how a car had driven away slowly, slowly, and on out past the edge of his little hand and out of their lives forever." - "Anyone Can Do It" by Manuel Muñoz
• 
  Julia San Miguel

  An inspiring and at times heart-wrenching collection of modern American short stories. I felt the challenges of each decade presently and heavily as this collection moved through them; I couldn't put this down. Not every story was memorable. Some personal favorites include: "The Lesson", "The Red Convertible", "Girl", "The Way We Live Now", "The American Embassy", "A Temporary Matter", and "The Paper Menagerie (certified tearjerker)".
  
• 
  Meli

  *3.5
  
  faves (5 stars): a conversation with my father by grace paley, the flowers by alice walker, story by lydia davis, the twenty-seventh man by nathan englander, st. lucy’s home for girls raised by wolves by karen russell, the paper menagerie by ken liu (this one made me sob <3)
  
  honorable mentions (4.5 stars): the lesson by toni cade bambara, a temporary matter by jhumpa lahiri, the dune by stephen king, the great silence by ted chiang
• 
  Ryan

  Stories that I really enjoyed (some not new to me): "China" by Charles Johnson; "Emergency" by Denis Johnson; "Sticks" by George Saunders; "The Penthouse" by Andrew Holleran; "The Dune" by Stephen King; "The Midnight Zone" by Lauren Groff.
• 
  Douglas

  A bit of a mixed bag, though the audiobook version is fantastically narrated by an all-star cast. Several standouts, alongside many MFA-type stories that are technically impressive but quickly forgotten.
  
  3.5/5
• 
  Marianna Monaco

  A fine collection.
  My favorites:
  The FLowers by Alice Walker
  Girl by Jamaica Kincaid
  The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
  The Great Silence by Ted Chiang
• 
  Sidik Fofana

  SIX WORD STORY: Introduced me to wonderful Percival Everett.
• 
  Ciera

  Really nice anthology of contemporary and modern short stories. I enjoyed the variety of forms/structures and the range of voices and styles.
• 
  Philip

  A great selection to dip in and out of
• 
  Taylor Franson Thiel

  Finished it in the sense that I read all my assigned readings + some for class and I’m calling it good. Full of great stories. There’s a reason each one was included.
• 
  av

  read for class, thought i might as well finish it. i'm being harsh, but ted chiang set the bar too high.
• 
  JustAButterfly

  Will update with the short stories I read from it later.