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

3.0

I enjoyed many of these stories as well as the variety of authors behind them. But it did raise questions for me about the word best in the title. At times I wished that word included a wider scope: not just challenging stories but also relaxing ones. I have a complicated relationship with the emotional manipulation of fiction: I want to take the journey, but I don’t want to notice my strings being pulled to do that. And this, at times, felt like each story wanted to pull me in its own direction. They did it well (which is why I continued reading), but it was a persistent low-level annoyance.