A review by pearseanderson
The Best American Short Stories 2018 by Heidi Pitlor, Roxane Gay

4.0

What a great collection! This took me two weeks of nightstand reading to finish, and I only skipped two stories, Cougar and History in China, because those were not grabbing me by halfway through. Everything else was good or great, with my favorites being Jamel Brinkley's "A Family" and Curtis Sittenfeld's "Prairie Wife". This book was full of interesting two-person interactions, from a elderly Korean grandparent who might have killed his grandson and forgotten it to a elk horn hunter and her lover. On the second read of Emma Cline's Los Angeles I still loved it, and Esme Weijun Wan's "What a Terrible Things It Was" still felt a bit too sudden in construction. It was a pleasure to read most of these and learn about the authors and why they created them, especially how long they were crafting them and storing them away. Made me confident in my ability. I can do some of these tricks. I can certainly read and understand what they put down here. Thank you Roxane Gay.