A review by karencarlson
The Best American Short Stories 2024 by Heidi Pitlor, Lauren Groff

4.75

 This year’s anthology felt hopeful. There was, of course, a certain darkness to many of the stories – that’s the bread and butter of much literary short fiction – but overall I found the stories to have endings that indicated change was possible, even if it didn’t happen within the story’s timeline. There was drug addiction, but a counterweight of the person recovery could release. Loneliness – of age, of language barriers, of introversion – found remedies in unusual places: music, a shopping mall, fantasy. This wasn’t universal, of course; some stories were pretty downbeat. But overall, I saw optimism.
FMI see my blog posts for each individual story at A Just Recompense.