Reviews

The Best American Short Stories 2019 by Heidi Pitlor, Anthony Doerr

dorkiki's review

inspiring reflective fast-paced

• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

Short stories I liked :
- The Era - Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
-The Third Tower - Deborah Eisenberg
- Bronze - Jeffrey Eugenides
- Anyone Can Do It - Manuel Muñoz 
- The Plan - Sigrid Nunez
- Letter of Apology - Maria Reva 
- Black Corfu - Karen Russel
- Audition - Saïd Sayrafiezadeh

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Forced institutionalization, Medical content, Death, Addiction, and Drug use

Moderate: War and Pedophilia

numbat's review

fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

ladyeremite's review

3.0

Generally good selection. Some standouts: Nicole Krauss, Seeing Ershadi; Alexis Schaitkin, Natural Disasters; Sigrid Nunez, The Plan

eileen_critchley's review

3.0

This year's collection was OK, not that memorable for me. Some years I love every story, and some years I don't.

sapphicreads64's review

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

mayyya02's review

3.0

It's more on me for thinking I'd enjoy a short story collection

jakeyjake's review

5.0

A joy. I found myself reading about one story a day? I loved this as a collection of very different stories and voices. These stories cover a wide spectrum of topics: youth, coming-of-age, rural, urban, race, sexuality, addiction, marriage, relationships, war, the occult, mystery, art, film, drugs. Some of these stories are hard topics to deal with (like a guy plotting to brutally murder his wife). Many of these stories brought words together that made me smile or introduced new words I'd never read before. I'd recommend reading them all through as a collection, but here are my favorites—the ones that really stuck with me:

Hellion by Julia Elliott - Gators and dirt bikes and coming of age
The Era by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah - Gattaca + mood drugs = wild
Seeing Ershadi by Nicole Krauss - almost as if you could hear a soundtrack behind the words
Letter of Apology by Maria Reva - Soviet Ukraine, KGB, and a poet
Black Corfu by Karen Russell - A doctor who operates on the dead on the island of Korcula
Bronze by Jeffrey Eugenides - a college student exploring his sexuality, an older gay man and his dying friend

catparton_ok's review

4.0

I love short stories. I think 2007 was the first year I picked up one of these annual collections and I haven’t read every year’s since, but that sounds like a good goal. 2019’s collection was guest edited by Anthony Doerr. Great selections. I particularly liked the pieces by Julia Elliott, Jeffrey Eugenides, Manuel Muñoz, and Alexis Schaitkin. 4/5⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

gordonj's review

4.0

I love this collection and look forward to reading it every year. I get to spend time with some of my favorite writers and get introduced to new voices. In this case, it was the unfamiliar writers I was most impressed by. My favorite stories came from Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (probably my favorite in this collection), Jamel Brinkley, Manuel Munoz, Sigrid Nunez, Alexis Schaitkin, and Weike Wang. Of my favorite writers, Jeffrey Eugenides and Mona Simpson's stories are amazing, as usual.

mulrooneyr's review

3.0

“To call it compassion makes it sound like a form of divine love, and it wasn't that; it was terribly human. If anything, it was an animal love, the love of an animal that has been living in an incomprehensible world until one day it encounters another of its kind and realizes that it has been applying its comprehension in the wrong place all along.”