The Best American Short Stories

by Katrina Kenison

Book Overview

This year's Best American Short Stories is edited by the critically acclaimed and best-selling author Barbara Kingsolver, whose latest book is Prodigal Summer. Kingsolver's selections for The Best American Short Stories 2001 showcase a wide variety of new voices and masters, such as Alice Munro, Rick Moody, Dorothy West, and John Updike. "Reading these stories was both a distraction from and an anchor to the complexities of my life -- my pleasure,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0395926882
• ISBN13: 9780395926888
• Release Date: October 2001
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 1.07 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

A wonderful collection

This is a wonderful collection of short stories. Many of them are from small literary magazines, and I would have not encountered these stories and authors if Barbara Kingsolver had not assembled this great collection. In addition to some of my longtime favorite writers (John Updike, Alice Monro, Rick Bass), I met some new favorites: Roy Parvin, Annette Sanford, Peter Orner. The geographic scope of this collection is amazing--stories set in China, Russia, the Himalayas, Wales, just to mention a few. The diversity in narrative styles is pretty impressive too. This is now one of my best-loved collections of short stories.

Awesome Collection

I have always loved the Best-American series. I think they're all excellent ways of tasting some of the best writing that comes out of America each year. Short stories have long been a favourite of mine and I find every year the Best American Short Stories are a joy to read. Not only are short stories perfect for modern American society where one rarely has time to sit down and finish a novel in a decent enough amount of time to remember the beginning when one reaches the end (as guest editor Kingsolver points out in her introduction), but these are the creme de la creme. Kingsolver did a wonderful job at picking them. I enjoyed every single one of them, some more than others of course, and I always come away with a list of books to check out (each author represented in the collection has a short bio and listing of works in the back of the book)... I definitely recommend this and the other Best American Short Stories books to everyone.

A TREASURE!

In her introduction to this estimable collection of short fiction, Barbara Kingsolver thanks the authors for "pieces of truth that moved me to a new understanding of the world." I add my gratitude for 20 memorable stories, diverse in concept but united by excellence. Arranged alphabetically by author, these tales are spare, one only four pages. All are vivified by rich narrative voices. The opening story, "Servants Of The Map" by Andrea Barrett introduces a young 19th century surveyor struggling through the Himalayas. Ridiculed by other members of his party, he carries a small wooden trunk holding letters from his wife. Powerful descriptions of the incapacitating cold bring chills, as does the gradual revelation that the surveyor is losing rational thought. Montana author Rick Bass imagines Kirby, a volunteer fireman so caught up in fighting fire that all else is tedium. His marriage suffers, yet it is fire that saves this relationship. The couple's ennui, their disagreements pale beside the dangers he faces when there is a blaze. "As long as the city keeps burning," Kirby thinks, "they can avoid becoming weary and numb. Always, he leaves, is drawn away, and then returns, to a second chance." It is Wales and D-Day once again in "Think Of England" by Peter Ho Davies. Sixteen-year-old Sarah works in a pub frequented by English soldiers who may use her. Another unlucky in love is "Pinky," the corpulent hero in Claire Davis's "Labors Of The Heart." For the first time in his forty plus years he falls in love. Can his affections ever be returned when he is categorized as "morbidly obese," and knows that "every movement, whether tying a shoe or climbing a short flight of stairs, becomes a labor of the heart?" Texas writer Annette Sanford offers "Nobody Listens When I Talk," an engaging mini-portrait of a young girl who spends a summer growing up. The maturation of two brothers is lined in "Boys," a poignant cameo of family life by Rick Moody. Bushels of laughter spark Trevanian's Basque-set story "The Apple Tree." Two village women, lifelong rivals, are next-door neighbors. While their original bone of contention had been which of them the village Romeo favored, (in truth, neither) they now square off for the fruit of an apple tree that sits on their boundary line. When harvesting apples the women come face to face. Each picks faster and faster until one pulls a limb over to gather more fruit. When she releases the branch it hits the other woman, toppling her into a bed of leeks. Mud begins to fly. Not only mud but verbal assaults as well: They were "Crying out every vilification that years of rivalry had stored up in their fertile imaginations, decorating one another's reputations with those biologically explicit calumnies for which the Basque language might have been specifically designed, were it not universally known that it was invented in heaven for use by the angels." The Best American S

Nice collection of short stories

I thoroughly enjoyed this collection. You can quibbleabout which authors or stories were omitted, but I found it be a very valuable resource in terms of singlesourcing an excellent variety of work. When I was a "budding" writer, short stories were my main sourceof inspirational reading. I learned a lot about point ofview, plot development and character analysis from some of the masters of the craft. I also became acquaintedwith scores of new writers seeking to make an impact in thelitery world. I would highly recommend this collection of short stories

"Large truths delivered in tight spaces."

Never one to avoid a good debate, 2001 Editor, Barbara Kingsolver (THE POISONWOOD BIBLE, PRODIGAL SUMMER) begins the latest installment of this "best of" series with fighting words: "From what I gather, most Americans would sooner read a five-hundred page book about southern France or a boy attending wizard school or how to make home decor from roadside trash or anything than pick up a book offering them a dozen tales of the world complete in twenty pages apiece. And I won't even discuss what they will do to avoid reading poetry" (p. xiii). Amen, Barbara, ain't it the truth. "These stories were, for me, both a distraction and an anchor," she writes. "They were my pleasure, my companionship, my salvation. I hope they will be yours" (p. xix).This year's collection of short stories travels the world from Hollywood to Hong Kong ("After Cowboy Chicken Came to Town"), from a Welsh pub ("Think of England") to the tropics of Madagascar ("Brothers and Sisters Around the World"). Along the way, we experience amore in the grocery aisle ("Labours of the Heart"), marriage ("Post and Beam"), war ("Think of England"), the difficulties of getting pregnant ("The Mourning Door"), and the passions of fire fighters ("The Fireman"). We also encounter a 16-year-old girl wise beyond her years in "Nobody Listens when I Talk." In selecting the stories collected here, Kingsolver tells us: "I sat with this question early on and tried to divine why it is that I love a short story when I do, and the answer came to me quite clearly: I love it for what it tells me about life. If it tells me something I didn't already know, or that I maybe suspected but never framed quite that way, or that never before socked me divinely in the solar plexus, then the story is worth the read" (p. xvi)."A good short story cannot simply be Lit Lite," Kingsolver observes in her insightful Introduction; "it is the successful execution of large truths delivered in tight spaces" (p. xviii). With contributions from writers including Rick Bass, Peter Ho Davies, Ha Jin, Rick Moody, Alice Munro, John Updike, and Dorothy West, the twenty "tight spaces" collected here reveal "large truths" indeed. As Series Editor, Katrina Kenison notes, Kingsolver's selection of stories hums "with the energy of twenty disparate voices raised under one roof" (p. xi), making this latest collection definitely "worth the read.".G. Merritt