The Best American Short Stories 2013 (The Best American Series ®)

Since these "BASS" anthologies have a different guest editor each year, it's inevitable that, for any given reader, some years will be better than others. And I'm afraid the 2013 edition was distinctly an "off" year for me. Last year I enjoyed almost every story in the book; this year I found most of them to be a failure in one sense or another.Some notes on selected stories, covering all of the good ones and some of the failures:"Miss Lora" by Junot Diaz is a story that I'd read before and didn't much like. I found its stylistic gimmickry pretentious and annoying: Diaz frequently switches to Spanish for words, phrases, and sentences, uses a second person narrative, and doesn't put quotation marks around dialog. But I read the story again, and this time I loved it. In a quietly minimalist way it brings its title character and her relationship with the protagonist to vivid life, making for a moving story. Personally I think it would have worked better without the stylistic gimmicks, but it's good in spite of them."Encounters With Unexpected Animals" by Brett Anthony Johnston has a nice title, but goes downhill from there, focussing on a 17-year-old girl who talks and acts like no 17-year-old ever has in the history of the human race."Magic Man" by Sheila Kohler creates its only interest or tension by putting a young girl at peril from a child molester. This works, as far as building tension. Catching fish by dynamiting a pond also works, but few would make the mistake of calling it art."The Chair" by David Means is a sort of stream-of-consciousness ramble about being a stay at home dad. Stream-of-consciousness stories inevitably run the risk of feeling like a stream of pointless blather, and to my eye this story runs aground on that risk.Lorrie Moore's "Referential" is the brilliant, diamond-like highlight of the book. Its scant few pages are so full of life and pain and honesty that it will (or ought to) leave you stunned and exhausted. Moore has a  new collection  coming out soon, and I for one, Can. Not. Wait."Train" is typical of Alice Munro's work: It's neatly crafted, but bloodlessly dry and lifeless, with lifeless characters drifting lifelessly through their lifeless lives. At one point the narrative rhetorically asks about two characters, "What was the matter with them? Were they falling in love?" Not frigging likely, I answered back. Not in an Alice Munro story."Philanthropy" by Suzanne Rivecca is a story to be admired, if not "enjoyed." It goes somewhat over the top in the relentlessness of its squaller and misery (the kitty-cancer was almost laughably gratuitous), but there's more going on here than squalor and misery for their own sake.... Which is something I wouldn't say about George Saunders' "The Semplica-Girl Diaries". This story appeared in his best-selling collection Tenth of December, and is typical Saunders fare; I suppose some will find it darkly humorous, but personally I find little humor in inventing absurdly contrived situations for the sole purpose of inflicting pain on drab and stupid characters."The World to Come" by Jim Shepard contains about three pages worth of a sweet and tender love story. Unfortunately that story is buried in 29 pages of interminably tedious pseudo-diary writing about life on a nineteenth-century New England farm. I've read and enjoyed many of Shepard's stories in the past, but I found this one painfully boring.Joan Wickersham's "The Tunnel, or The News From Spain" provides a welcome uptick near the end of the book. A portrait of a woman's relationship with her disabled and sickly mother may sound both dreary and trite, but this story is neither. It's full of life and wit and intelligence, and was a pleasure to read.And one final, negative note about this anthology: in an annoying and amateurish flaw to the eBook edition, the table of contents lists only the stories' titles, without the authors' names.

Five Stars, With Caveats. This is a ongoing series, done every year. Every year a guest editor selects his or her selection of stories from what was out there in the world, either published online or in an actual book or magazine. Fair enough. The selection from year to year varies with the editors. Most years there is somewhat of an emphasis on selections from the New Yorker, a prestigious magazine to be sure. Somtimes you find stories only published online. This seems more adventuresome to me. Overall the quality is very high and intriguing. It does seem to me, though, that authors and editors throughout the land and around the world (and for this yearly publication) tend to favor one style of writing and one very similar voice, that varies from modern to postmodern. Where are the authors of the next wave of writing? Many of the stories are good. Too many seem contrived from the head, though well done. What is lacking are stories from the heart. I want something to move me, and not simply delight me with well-wrought phrases and overall good craftshmanship. To be a real author, one must impale oneself upon the world, and sing one's final moments on this Earth, recounting the victories and defeats, weaving them seamlessly into a vision of Eternity.

Whether its mystery, romance, or just the best American stories, the compiled short stories from all these books are wonderful. I never get tired of reading because there are always varied stories. Short stories are for people that take too long to finish a book because they are too busy. The short stories make it easy to finish a story in one sitting rather than over time. I don't know about you, but I often forget what the story is about 3 weeks later when I return to where I left off. Out of all the stories, there is about 4 I didn't care for. Even then, I feel okay reading a bad story because it didn't take too much time from my life. The book is filled with great stories. Grammar and spelling is perfect. I would recommend this book to friends. It's called "Best" for a reason!

I almost never review a book before I've read all of it. Here, I've read just the introduction by Elizabeth Strout and the first story. I can confidently rate and recommend it already.As a former English major, former English teacher, and life-long reader, I found Strout's introduction one of the best English classes I've ever attended. In it, she talks of her selection criteria for the stories. It is a brilliant piece of analysis and well worth the price of the book all by itself.The first story, read with her criteria in mind, was a joy both in and of itself and for the extra I got from it thanks to the book's introduction.I already have my money's worth. And, better still, I have all the rest of the stories to enjoy in the days ahead.

Is a short story engaging? Is it memorable? Will I recall it long after I have set it aside? Of the twenty stories selected by Elizabeth Strout for this year's anthology of "The Best American Short Stories 2013," I found seven which meet my own criteria, each in a unique, spectacular way. While I found two stories falling short of their author's previous work and two others almost meandering, finding thirty-five percent of the stories selected for this anthology to be so remarkable requires my most enthusiastic recommendation.Reviewing and editing entails high subjectivity. I have no doubt a number of stories which should have been considered among the best of 2013 lie unpublished. Nonetheless, the best of the stories in this anthology should inspire those who aspire to write to write even better, to submit and resubmit until their talent can no longer be denied.

Great to sample Elizabeth Stout's judgement here. Some fine stories.

Great to be exposed to new and emerging talent, clearly some voices stronger than others but all of value to read.

I'm sure glad that I wasn't reading the worst short stories of the year. I found these stories bizarre and some were bordering on porn. I will never order another book of short stories!

Excellent

I love 'The Best...' collections - but some are better than others. This collection hasn't had brilliant reviews but I am wondering if this is because of the lack of well-known writers. Anyway, we shall see - I haven't read any yet but the price was good.