Best of Tin House: Stories by Dorothy Allison

Best of Tin House: Stories Reviews

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  PR

  This is, bar only a couple, the best short story anthology I've ever had the privilege to read. The range is wide, the stories stunning. Good shit. Get with this.
  
  
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  Stephen Dorneman

  A few too many magical realism, experimental, and just plain overblown, overworked prose pieces kept this from five stars, but the remainder are solid pieces that make it worth wading through the rest. Clearly, Tin House editors are more open to non-traditional pieces than I am (and Hey you kids, get off of my lawn!). Your mileage may vary.
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  Pearse Anderson

  Some good ones, a surprising amount of disappointing stories, and overall a thick book! Excited to put it back on my shelf and move onto other Tin House stories. Also, this is sad bc Tin House is no longer a literary magazine.
  
  Connection: I was a Tin House Books intern.
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  Helia Rethmann

  Collections are a good way to find new favorite authors! Hate some, but love some, too!
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  Sara

  I really liked some of these stories and really hated some of these stories so it was quite a mix.
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  Catherine Bruzdzinski

  Well written, however not my favorite.
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  Bad Horse

  The writers in this volume are great writers. The editors, I'm less impressed with. Each story is a great story, but they're so alike that they seem all to have been written by that same one person who's writing all the stories for all the literary journals these days. They must be slow, leisurely explorations, in a certain style, of one of a small set of allowable personal problems, with no resolution and a sad ending. (At least Tin House, unlike one famous journal I could name, still lets writers use the third person.)
  
  This sounds harsh, but I could say something similar for every literary journal in English today. There are an infinite variety of stories to tell, but the arbiters of literary taste have decreed that this one kind of story is the only kind they will publish. This is why no one reads literary journals anymore. I'd probably give the book 4 stars if I weren't so angry about it.
  
  This volume is especially dreary because of the relentless misery. I stopped halfway through the book; I can't afford to expose myself to that much concentrated depression. The editors seem to believe that a story must be tragic to be deep. The Atlantic Monthly publishes the same general sort of stories, but at least they're sometimes happy.
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  Bryce Holt

  Only for the hyper literary, this was a practice in patience. A fine textbook for those who are on the cusp of highbrow literature; a totally unnecessary mess for those of us who are commercial fiction readers and totally fine with being exactly that.
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  Joan Oexmann

  i really enjoyed this books. the stories were all the perfect length, i could start and finish one within the same day. if you commute a lot i would strongly recommend this book.
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  Laureen Vonnegut

  loved most of the selections. also nice foreward by dorothy allison.
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  Meredith

  some great ones, here, obviously, but as a whole, shockingly disappointing
  
  (keep my personal problems with former tin house personnel in mind, to be fair)