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The Best American Short Stories (2010)

by Richard Russo(Favorite Author)

3.95 of 5 Votes: 1

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Marier Books

review 1: Reading the 2010 anthology (and simultaneously reading 2011's) was the first time I realized that the guest editor's curation makes a difference. Great characters, focus on well-done prose. Yay. Short stories!I really enjoyed Jennifer Egan's "Safari," "Delicate Edible Birds" by Lauren Groff, and "Further Interpretations of Real Life Events" by Kevin Moffett, although in general, the stories were consistently excellent.
review 2: I picked this book up from the library because a friend of mine loved Richard Russo's Empire Falls, and I figured reading his selection of 2010's best American stories would give me an idea of his sensibilities. Well, he's a bit of a downer.Which isn't to say he chose poorly. Many of the stories here are powerful and captivating - I'd f... morelip the pages and suddenly find myself at the end, hungering for more. It's only detriment is that many of the stories present sad situations that only dig themselves deeper into sadness, desperation, and despair, without trying to find some consolation - true to heart tragedies. Admittedly, this is mostly a personal issue, but it's still hard to read more than one of these stories in a sitting. But Russo's selections still provided some gems, like Karen Russell's "The Seagull Army Descends on Strong Beach," Brendan Matthews's "My Last Attempt to Explain What Happened to the Lion Tamer," and Jim Shepard's "The Netherlands Lives with Water," stories that are as playful as they are inventive, creating worlds just slightly off-kilter from ours, and yet as real as any other realistic fiction. There are stories mired in quiet sadness, the frenetic energy of war, and wild waves of desire. Just because the stories weren't all to my liking, doesn't mean they were bad - on the contrary, I'd recommend this addition to the Best American Short Stories collection to anyone who enjoys literary fiction. less

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