The Best American Short Stories 2014

I try to read the Best American Short Stories every year. It is always a worthwhile read, though with each year, your enjoyment will vary depending on how your taste lines up with the editor's. I haven't read much writing by this year's editor, Jennifer Egan, but based on her selections for this book, I might soon.

The 2014 edition focuses on strong stories with vivid characters. Compared to other years in recent memory, this edition had more stories that wowed me than any other year. A few highlights: the narrator of "After the Flood," who tries to see the positive in everything and everyone, though she doesn't find it much; the gallows humor of a former professor in "Indian Uprising"; Paul, the musician, who hangs onto his rock star image even into old age in "A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me"; John Fuller, the 14th century music teacher in "La Pulchra Nota," who never stops trusting in divine providence through all his life catastrophes; the girl who wows all the boys of a fraternity and gets the nickname "God" (in "God"); the two sisters in "Next to Nothing" who appear to have no emotional attachment to anyone.

I could make a second list just as long. This is an impressive, well-chosen set of evocative stories, one of the best entries to the series. I liked Peter Cameron's story, "After the Flood," so much that I picked up a collection of his stories after finishing this book. The Best American series is great for discovering new writers.

One caveat: five of the stories are from the New Yorker magazine. It's a great magazine, and they are great stories, but if, like me, you are New Yorker subscriber, you have already read 1/4 of this book.

To be great, it's not enough for a short story to be concise and well-written, with vivid description. Great stories, I believe, have strong characters who are somehow changed or transformed by their experience.

The stories in this collection focus on very mundane experiences. Overall the theme seems to be "people at their worst," when they're dying badly, doing something that's hurtful or even criminal, or just making bad decisions. As a reviewer, I read several over a course of days; I suspect it's better to dip in every week or two, read one in depth, and then have time to think.

As others noted, it would be rare to genuinely like every story, but I found few that held my interest and even fewer that left me feeling satisfied with the experience. It's the nature of contemporary short stories to have ambiguous endings, but these stories state the ambiguity explicitly: when I keep reading, "We never found out ..." I just feel frustrated.

By coincidence I am also reading a nonfiction psychology book, Riveted, by Jim Davies. Davies notes that we take most pleasure in something we've exerted effort to get, a concept known as "effort justification." He refers to "idea effort justification," where we appreciate something we've had to struggle to understand - and then we figure it out. I suspect there's an inverted u-shaped curve, where we lose interest if there's too much or too little effort. These stories all require effort to understand, but in many cases, I was left confused.

My favorite story was "God;" we're introduced to a woman who writes a poem about a sexual encounter with a fraternity boy; as the story progresses, the narrator reveals his own secret, and at the right moment, recognizes her secret too. Although of course the future is only foreshadowed in the narrator's speculation, everything has changed for him, though perhaps not for her.

The author of "God" communicates these secrets without being explicit - showing, not telling - and the effect is powerful.

The beginning of "Antarctica" would work as a mystery, and the story held my interest, although was ultimately frustrating. "Mysterious disappearances" seems to be another theme of this collection.

In "Charity" a young man has no medical insurance and gets into some barely credible violent episodes over the drugs.

"Kattekoppen" was intriguing but I need to go back and re-read a few times.

If you generally like short stories, you'll probably be glad you picked up this volume, whether you like many, few, or none. But as other reviewers pointed out, this collection reflects the idiosyncratic tastes of the editors; it's not clear if they reflect contemporary trends. It's convenient to have so many assembled in one place, without subscribing to multiple periodicals and stacking them up.

I typically stay away from "The Best American Short Stories" series and stick with the "Best Nonrequired Reading" series because I find the latter to be more diverse and accessible. However, this year's "Best Nonrequired Reading" was one of the worst that I have read in a long time which made me pick up a copy of "The Best American Short Stories 2014" to help cleanse my palate. And BOY was I pleased that I did!

I typically shy away from this collection between I find it difficult to sit down and read a plethora of short stories especially from different authors and with different themes. However, this collection hit the short story nail directly on the head! Each story really encompassed what is so perfect about the medium and form. The two best examples of this are "Charity" and "Indian Uprising." These are two of the first stories and really set the tone for the collection which proves over and over again the purpose and role of short stories. Neither have a strong resolution or follow the typical collegiate plot mountain (introduction, rising action, inciting incident, etc.). But the character development is beautiful and the feelings that the stories evoke are fantastic. There are a couple of duds, which is why I couldn't give it five stars, but they're few and far between. Additionally, I could spot the duds immediately from the table of contents because I'm not a huge fan of T.C. Boyle or Benjamin Nugent; I still gave them a shot though!

Overall, this is a great collection and it makes me want to read some of the editions from past years.

Collected in this book are some of the best stories I've ever read, but if you're not a reader of literary fiction, you might miss the point of a lot of them and think they're "dull" simply because the narrative isn't as flashy or "clever" as the stack of mystery novels you blazed through on your Florida beach vacation. If you read for good writing, powerful emotional hooks, and all around good storytelling, then this is certainly worth looking through. There is some really incredible writing on display here from some true masters of the craft. Some of these stories moved me to tears, most of them had me saying "Damn..." to an empty room after I read the last word.

Stories:
Charity
The Indian Uprising
The Night of the Satellite
After the Flood
Long Tom Lookout
Medium Tough
The Breeze
Hover
A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me
At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners
The Judge's Will
Evie M.
Kattekoppen
This Is Not A Love Song
La Pulchra Nota
God
Mastiff
Next to Nothing
Madame Bovary's Greyhound
Antarctica

I always buy the annual edition of this series.

I have mentioned this in previous Best American reviews, but I'll say it again: this is the perfect way to enjoy excellent examples of short fiction (or travel writing, or essays) without having to wade through hundreds of periodicals. Someone else has done that initial cull for you.

Which is not to say you should stop your subscriptions to "The Atilantic" or " Granta." There will always be life-changing stories out there that have not been anthologized. (There are also life-changing stories that haven't even been published. Though if a story is written in a forest with no one around to read it....?)

But Best American offers, once a year, a sweet harvest of work from extremely talented writers, all in one place.

I've enjoyed other years' collections more than I like this one, so far. (I never marathon through in quick succession; I like to savor the stories over several months.) So, I don't know if I just happened to land on stories that didn't grab me, or if this will be the overall vibe of the collection.

The roster of contributors is impressive, as usual: Anne Beattie, TC Boyles, Joyce Carol Oates, as well as seventeen other writers. I have no complaint about the various style or themes.

But it seems to me as if some of the writers are pulling their punches. The stories don't seem as vibrant as in years past--which is not to say they lack anything technically. I LIKED the ones I've read, but I don't know if I would hand this book to someone else, as I've done in the past, and say, "You HAVE to read (fill in the blank)."

Another (minor) issue: at least three of these stories involve the main character's homosexuality. That means that 15% of the main characters are gay, a "slightly" higher percentage than in the general population.

I am not saying that writing from a homosexual perspective or about homosexual characters should be taboo. I am saying that embedding this into three out of twenty stories verges on the gimmicky. I know it's currently hip to be gay, but if three out of twenty stories were about actuaries or horticulturists, I would have the same complaint.

So I don't know if this indicates the editor's bias, or if this is the new hot topic.

I was glad ( GLAAD, get it?) to see that the number of stories revolving around graduate students or wealthy divorcees has kind of diminished, because for a while those were unavoidable. But now it seems that gay is the new black, in a sense.

Personally, I would like to see stories that feature characters whose sexual preferences, if not vital to the story, are not necessarily addressed. Only one of the three stories to which I referred would have qualified. And yes, I am including heterosexual characters in this as well. Some stories stand on their own without having to underline the character's sexual orientation, and that way a reader who is homo- OR heterosexual can relate.

As usual, I do recommend getting this book so you can enjoy what's been happening in American fiction over the last year. But hang onto those older editions, in case you want a really satisfying, dependable read now and then.

I made the mistake of ordering this thinking I could use it in my high school composition classes. Perhaps some schools would use it, but not mine. The stories in this collection are based on adult themes such as dealing with drug addiction, murder for revenge, problems with sexual orientation, effects of divorce on a child, and even operating on a placenta in a meth-head mother. In all honesty, I didn't even "get" the focus of some of these stories. Way over my head! The authors are good writers, I have no critique on that point, but I will definitely not use these in my comp class, nor will I finish the book. Not for me.

The Best American Short Stories, published in October 2014 is a compilation of stories written by some of the best American Short Story writers and edited by Jennifer Eagan. It is disappointing. As an avid fan of short stories, I expected to truly enjoy this book, and I picked stories randomly.

"The Indian Uprising" by Ann Beattie confused mr almost from the start. Initially, I enjoyed the dialogue, and then it spiraled out of control.

"A Hand Down to Guide Me" by David Gates is about one bunch of folks living in the past and the other group quite uncertain where it is headed. xxxxx learns that his friend, Paul, wants to die in his country home. He arrives with a feigned sense of humor and quickly dissolves into a painful mess with a strong desire to die.

In one of the better stories, "After the Flood" by Peter Cameron is told by a woman living a dull life with her non-communicative husband. After a bad blood, the woman is visited by their new pastor, who half asks/half tells them that they will be hosting a poor family of three whose home washed out. Their short stay touches each one's sense of loneliness and pain. It also awakens the woman's sense of social justice. By the end, the couple agree that their church offers them nothing, and jointly decide not to return, in seemingly their first, albeit short, conversation in some time.

Death and loneliness are common themes, as well as living, in an uneasy truce with unmet needs. See "Mastiff" by Joyce Carol Oates, another story I did enjoy. In order to give this book a fair evaluation, I plan to put off reading the rest of the stories. Perhaps it was just Halloween that sentenced me to a dark mood. Look for a rereading and update over the next few weeks.

I am rating this book with a mildly positive review, and suggest you take it out of the library.

Josephine Marino Nachison

Disappointing. I know because I cannot remember even ONE of these stories. Nothing outstanding or provocative here.
I look forward to this collection and the O. Henry collection every year, but this year's BASS was not memorable for me. One thing struck me as unusual though, because I am a short story writer myself, there were more stories which depended on the last line for their denouement. When I was getting my degree in writing, some professors emphasized that this was an old, outdated method for a story's conclusion. Has short fiction literary fashion changed or is this due to Jennifer Egan's choices?

Obviously, there are some good stories in this collection and I hate to be overly critical because I want people to read more short stories. But I knew with Jennifer Egan as the judge there would be a fair amount of "showing off," and, in my opinion, there is too much. I like a great voice in a short story and with this batch, the emphasis is more on "cool" and "male" and big words. Last year's, with Elizabeth Strout as the editor, was far better.

This is a terrible compilation of depressing stories that appear to have been written to impress the literary community with no regard to outside readers. The book never got any better, sordid story after sordid story. Absolutely awful.