The Best American Short Stories 2008

by Salman Rushdie (Editor), Heidi Pitlor (Series Editor), T. Coraghessan Boyle (Contributor)

This brilliant collection, edited by the award-winning and perennially provocative Salman Rushdie, boasts a “magnificent array” (Library Journal) of voices both new and recognized.With Rushdie at the helm, the 2008 edition “reflects the variety of substance and style and the consistent quality that readers have come to expect” (Publishers Weekly).

“We all live in and with and by stories, every day, whoever and wherever we are. The freedom to tell each other the stories of ourselves, to retell the stories of our culture and beliefs, is profoundly connected to the larger subject of freedom itself.”—Salman Rushdie, editor

Introduction / by Salman Rushdie --
Admiral / T.C. Boyle --
The year of silence / Kevin Brockmeier --
Galatea / Karen Brown --
Man and wife / Katie Chase --
Virgins / Danielle Evans --
Closely held / Allegra Goodman --
May we be forgiven / A.M. Homes --
From the desk of Daniel Varsky / Nicole Krauss --
The king of sentences / Jonathan Lethem --
The worst you ever feel / Rebecca Makkai --
The wizard of West Orange / Steven Millhauser --
Nawabdin Electrician / Daniyal Mueenuddin --
Child's play / Alice Munro --
Buying Lenin / Miroslav Penkov --
Vampires in the lemon grove / Karen Russell --
Puppy / George Saunders --
Quality of life / Christine Sneed --
Missionaries / Bradford Tice --
Straightaway / Mark Wisniewski --
Bible / Tobias Wolff

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Anthologies, Literature, Contemporary, Short Story Collection, School

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie is an Indian-born British and American novelist. His work often combines magic realism with historical fiction and primarily deals with connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Western civilizations, typically set on the Indian subcontinent. Rushdie's second novel, Midnight's Children (1981), won the Booker Prize in 1981 and was deemed to be "the best novel of all winners" on two occasions, marking the 25th and the 40th anniversary of the prize.
After his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988), Rushdie became the subject of several assassination attempts and death threats, including a fatwa calling for his death issued by Ruhollah Khomeini, the supreme leader of Iran. In total, 20 countries banned the book. Numerous killings and bombings have been carried out by extremists who cite the book as motivation, sparking a debate about censorship and religiously motivated violence. In 2022, Rushdie survived a stabbing at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York.
In 1983, Rushdie was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was appointed a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France in 1999. Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for his services to literature. In 2008, The Times ranked him 13th on its list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945. Since 2000, Rushdie has lived in the United States. He was named Distinguished Writer in Residence at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University in 2015. Earlier, he taught at Emory University. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2012, he published Joseph Anton: A Memoir, an account of his life in the wake of the events following The Satanic Verses. Rushdie was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in April 2023.
Rushdie's personal life, including his five marriages and four divorces, has attracted notable media attention and controversies, particularly during his marriage to actress Padma Lakshmi.

Reviews

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite two incredibly lame introductions from both editor Salman Rushdie and series editor Heidi Pitlor (exactly how many variations on "What is 'Best'?" "What is 'American'?" "What is 'Short'?" "What is 'The'?" will we have to read before they find some other solution for the opening pages?), this book was definitely one of the better ones in the series. Way to go Salman! It does seem strange, though, that among the thousands of stories that came out this year, so many of the "Best" (whatever that means) happened to have been published in Harper's and the New Yorker (coincidentally (or not), two of the three or four short-story-publishing magazines that Mr. Rushdie admits to actually having heard of before), and that so many of them were by famous writers. Maybe one of these years a BASS editor will have the guts to do what Garrison Keillor did in 1998 and judge the stories blind, at the risk of rejecting some brilliant ode to a glass of water by Updike.

[Joseph · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I have read only 30% of the stories so far, I'd like to make a preliminary comment,while recognizing that such a way of judging a work of art is both dangerous and subject to change. However, since we are dealing with unrelated short stories ,the problem is not so severe.
To begin,all editor's are subject to their prejudices when selecting "the best" of anything. Rushdie admits as much in the introduction,which ,thankfully says a lot more than series editor,Heidi Pitlor, does. Ms.Pitlor seems to have a problem with waht is meant by best,or American. Short,or stories.I'm surprised she had no problem with "the."
At any rate if you love Rushdie,you will probably love his selections. I merely like Rushdie and consequently merely like the collection.
While I am not a big fan of surprise endings, I think the one in "Admiral" works well. T.C. Boyle does a nice job in leading up to it.
I likes "Virgins" also, although I believe they are an endangered species.While the story is not a new one and the ending somewhat predictable,Danielle Evans has written an enjoyable story.
I was less impressed with Goodman's "Closely Held." It's been awhile, but I remember feeling the writing a bit strained..forced. Perhaps the fact I hate computers has something to do with it.
I was not at all enamoured of "The Worst You Ever Feel."It was another story I felt was "forced." I like literature that flows;that has a sure rhythm to it. That's something Hemingway and Faulkner did equally well, though one wrote very short declarative sentences and the other wrote sentences of unsure parentage and several pages in length.
I very much enjoyed Krauss' "From the Desk of Daniel Varsky." I think it's well paced and well written. It's also quite clever. I think modern readers prefer that type of writing today,although I still pine for writing that actually says something profound about the "human condition."
A final note. All of the stories ,I've mentioned are,of course, examples of writing at a high level.My concerns about some of them are more a reflection of my own personal taste than anything else.
To fault a writer for not satisfying some particular reader whim(as too many inexperienced would be critics do)is both unfair and unwarranted.

[M.E. · Rating 4 out of 5]

What I like most about this collection is the variety. There are some insanely dark stories, and some happier stories, some rigidly realistic stories, and some fantastical stories. I think this shows the wide variety that good writing comes in and challenges the rigid genre boundaries that I hate, but that everyone seems compelled to impose on quality fiction. As far as I'm concerned, a good story is a good story and this year's anthology has plenty of those. Some notables include "The Year of Silence," by Kevin Brokmeier, "The Worst You Ever Feel" by Rebecca Makkai, "Vampires in the Lemon Grove," by Karen Russell, and "Puppy," by George Saunders.
I can't help but feel a little put off by Bradford Tice's story, "Missionaries," about Mormon missionaries, because I spent two years of my life as a Mormon missionaries. I'm not naive enough to say that there are no missionaries like the ones he describes, but I find it a little audastic of him to write about them when he isn't even a member of the church. I think the only people who really understands what it's like to be a Mormon missionaries are those who have been Mormon missionaries. I don't care how many of them he talked to. But really, it doesn't feel like he's trying to portray the experience of a missionary, but that he is just using Mormon missionaries to make his point. I feel uncomfortable about that, but I am biased. I guess if there is every going to be anything of substance written about what missionary life is really like I'll have to do it myself.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are only a handful of stories I enjoyed among those compiled here. My favorite was "The Worst You Ever Feel", by Rebecca Makkai, richly imagined and infused with music and history. Having just read Chabon's entreaty to put action back into fiction, which I fully support, I couldn't help but notice the preponderence of slice-of-life stories.
I put the book down, forgot about it, picked it up again. I went through the first lines of all of the stories, and the first paragraphs. "Make something happen," I begged the authors. "What made the editor notice you?" I don't mind working for a story, but I want to be rewarded for my trust in the author. I want to be compensated for the time spent reading the story.

Here is the first sentence of Makkai's beautiful story: "When the nine-fingered violinist finally began playing, Aaron hid high up on the wooden staircase, as far above the party as the ghosts."
Who is Aaron? Why is he hiding? Is he the only one who can see the ghosts? Why are there ghosts? Why does the violinist have only nine fingers? What is the violinist playing? Does having nine fingers affect his music? So many mysteries, and that's just the first sentence. The story winds across continents and years.

Overall, for my taste, this is a spotty collection with a couple of gems.

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

"What I learned from this book"... hmmm, that maybe there's a reason why the publishing industry is crashing along with every other industry - most modern short fiction (at least as represented here) is stylistically, linguistically, and thematically redundant. This could easily have been "The Best American Short Stories (fill in any year since 1987). I was much more impressed with the work in the "Best New American Voices." Good, well-crafted, well-written, polished stories of which I remember none.

[Chantal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Since 1978, the best American short stories have been collected annually in a series plainly enough titled The Best American Short Stories. The Houghton Mifflin Company publishes it and Heidi Pitlor is the series editor. She does the heavy lifting, reading thousands of short stories published in such well-respected literary magazines as The New Yorker and in many more obscure publications, as well as the stories published by various university presses. It’s Pitlor’s job to whittle the collection down to approximately one hundred stories, then it’s the guest editor’s work to choose the top twenty. Each year a different writer is invited to fill this position; past guest editors have included Stephen King (2007), Barbara Kingsolver (2001), E.L Doctorow (2000), Amy Tan (1999), Tobias Wolff (1994), Richard Ford (1990), John Updike (1984), and Joyce Carol Oates (1979). And each year the series is a popular success -- regularly landing a place on the New York Times Best Sellers’ List. The Best American Short Stories 2008 is no exception.
Salmon Rushdie, this year’s editor, admits, in his introduction, that any anthology will reflect the preferences of the editor, but he also admits, regarding stories, “I’m pretty broad church, really.” This is an unusually appropriate admission considering, if there is a recurring theme amongst these stories (beyond old-fashioned naturalism), it is religion.
Take, for instance, “Missionaries” by Bradford Tice: a coming of age story, within this collection, in which Joseph, a devout boy, bike-riding through the streets of North Knoxville and door knocking for the Church of Latter- Day Saints, wrestles with the obligations of his religion, his desire to please his parents, his terror at the daunting task of soliciting for the Lord, his admiration for and disappointment in his missionary partner, and the usual temptations that haunt young men. At its core this story declares that sometimes it is the silent ones among us who are the truly devout, and that sometimes those loud voices in the choir belong to the people we need be most wary of -- an appropriate story this year, considering the recent foibles of a certain former governor.
“Man and Wife” (which, it should be noted, is Katie Chase’s first published story) calls to mind the Texas polygamy sect that made headlines in the Spring of 2008, when the main character, nine-year-old Mary Ellen, is forced to put away her Barbies in preparation for her wedding to the aging Mr. Middleton. This tale offers an intriguing look at a child bride in a contemporary religious sect, and is made even more fascinating for the unsettling effects of such commonplace words as Dixie cup, Diet Coke and Jeopardy, juxtaposed the author’s calm and competent handling of some rather condemnable material. Chase manages to serve up this tale of child brides and arranged marriages in America as if it was a mere tray of pickles and olives she was offering, while also highlighting the resiliency of man, or rather, girl.
“Hmmm, let’s see.” He’d (Mr. Middleton) mull over the choices, select a pimento-stuffed green olive. I’d turn to offer the tray to Dad, who had a penchant for sweet pickles, but then: “Please, wait just a moment – perhaps another. Hmm, let’s see.” And he’d choose a kalamata. The metal tray was heavy, but my arms grew stronger, and I learned to balance it on my shoulder.

It’s no surprise to have an Alice Munro story amongst these best of the best. Like Tice’s story, and Chase’s, Munro’s “Child Play” is also a sort of coming of age piece (although Munro’s reaches into mature adulthood) that warrants reflection on various religious notions and life choices when Marlene and Charlene, best girlfriends at a United Church of Canada summer camp, in a moment of spontaneous mischief commit an act of profound ruthlessness before returning to their respective and separate lives. The crime both shapes and haunts their remaining days, until years later, when the seriously ill Charlene solicits Marlene, a retired professor, to seek out a Father Hofstrader from the Catholic Church in order that he might hear her confession. From a religious standpoint the story speaks of the weight of sin and the individual nature of religion.
Was I not tempted, during all this palaver? Not once? Not swayed by longing, by a magical-lantern show, the promise of pardon? No. Not really. It’s not for me. What’s done is done, what’s done remains. Flocks of angels, tears of blood, notwithstanding.

“Bible” a Tobias Wolfe story expands on this notion of individuality and religion. Maureen Casey is a professor in a Catholic college, who is abducted by the desperate father of Hassan, a student of Maureen’s who has cheated on an exam. (Although, of the stories mentioned in this review, this is the first to admit a diverse cultural element, be assured many others in the collection do.) Hassan’s father, desperate to save his son from expulsion intends to force Maureen to swear on a bible that she will not report the incident to Father Crespi. The irony in the story is the religious predilections of the characters teaching and attending Saint Ignatius. Hassan and his father are Muslim, while Maureen declares, “I’ve had it with clueless men passing on orders from God.” While exploring the depths of a parent’s desperation for his child’s success, Wolfe’s story also pokes at the incongruity that lurks at the foundation of many religious schools within North America, and reminds us of the very real conflict between Muslims and Christians that, for lack of understanding and tolerance, continually threatens peace in America.
“The human being is a storytelling animal, or, actually, the storytelling animal, the only creature on Earth that tells itself stories to understand what sort of creature it is.” Salmon Rushdie reminds us of this, in his introduction. That this collection, a sampling of this year’s favorite stories, boasts so many religious tales speaks of us as a people. (Another is Rebecca Makkai’s “The Worst You Ever Feel” in which a boy’s parents brag that he is a young Rabbi for the visions he professes.) Toss in a few stories of worship at its most extreme and ridiculous -- such as T.C. Boyle’s “Admiral’ in which a wealthy couple pays two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars to have their Afghan cloned, Jonathan Lethem’s “The King of Sentences in which a pair of undergrads worship an author to a most ludicrous end, and Miroslav Penkov’s story “Buying Lenin”, a story about purchasing Lenin’s body on ebay -- and it would seem that North Americans are weighing spirituality against their consumer society. Add A.M. Holmes’ “May We Be Forgiven” to the mix, and Karen Russell’s not-so-traditional story contemplating an eternity on earth, or more accurately a living hell, in “Vampires in the Lemon Grove”, and The Best American Short Stories 2008 makes for a fair portrayal of the conscience and concerns of our North American culture, a culture strongly in support of a new president, one who advocates change and asks the people to be responsible for this change.

[Olivia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is it a coincidence that the first handful of stories in this collection were my favorites? Or is this further evidence of my reaction to most short story collections - I read them earnestly and appreciatively at first, and then I sort of get bored with the format?

In any case, there were some amazing stories in here, a few duds, and some so-sos. The stories I was most impressed with, that stuck with me the most were:

Admiral - T.C. Boyle
The Year of Silence - Kevin Brockmeier (*LOVED IT*)
Man And Wife - Katie Chase
The King of Sentences - Jonathan Lethem

Others I got a kick out of:

Closely Held - Allegra Goodman
Nawabhin Electrician - Daniyal Mueenuddin
Vampires In The Lemon Grove - Karen Russell

[Jerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a nice collection of short stories; it’s edited by Salman Rushdie, although he doesn’t say much. As titles go, this is more hyperbole than most, but there are some very good stories; there are also some horribly clichéd stories, including one about blacks and one about Mormons.

There are a couple that are very low-level science fiction or fantasy, such as the one about the cloned dog (and the activists who will do anything to discredit cloning), and the one about random acts of silence by the universe in New York City; the latter very intriguing and, like most of the stories here, lovely to read.

As a means of keeping up on moderately representative stories by year, this, in a sample of one, seems to be a good choice.

[J. Pennington · Rating 3 out of 5]

While these short stories are exceptionally well-crafted for the most part, I can recommend almost none of them due to inappropriate sexual content. I expected this, and went into it looking for education in honing my writing craft, not entertainment. While there were a few very good stories in there, I'm disappointed that apparently to be "best" a story needs gratuitous or indecent sexual content. Maybe I can help change this standard a bit? Who knows. :)

[Meish · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great collection of short stories with a lot of variety. Stand outs for me were Kevin Brockmeier's The Year of Silence, Alice Munro's Child's Play, and Karen Russell's Vampires in the Lemon Grove.

[Sophie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Guest Editor: Salman Rushdie

I haven’t yet read anything by Salman Rushdie but know he is quite recognized in the literary world. His bio lists him as a British Indian novelist and he has a title. At the very beginning of his intro, he establishes that he is not an American so he is honored to guest edit this year’s BASS. He says the short story is an American form. Something I was not aware of. I would think there are many international authors of short stories. It just happens that this particular anthology limits its selections to North America and Canada. In fact, some of the selections are written by immigrants like himself.

I was happy to find that I enjoyed most of the selections very much, my favorite of all being Buying Lenin by Miroslav Penkov, a Bulgarian immigrant. Also Nawabdin Electrician by Danival Mueenuddin who has impressive credentials. I had read this story before when I had read his book In Other Rooms, Other Wonders which I loved.

Other stories that made the top of my list were:
Admiral by T.C. Boyle
The Year of Silence by Kevin Brockemeier
Virgins by Danielle Evans
Closely Held by Allegra Goodman
Quality of Life by Christine Sneed
Bible by Tobias Wolf.

The King of Sentences by Jonathan Lethem was the worst for me. Too bizarre. Maybe I just didn’t get it.

Most of the rest were very good selections and I was not disappointed.

[Scott Done]

**Read “Sea Oak” by George Saunders for my short essay class**

Imaginative, and shows the struggles of a lower socioeconomic family.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bear with me, I did a little write-up on each story. It’s hard to say which story was my favorite and there definitely are some klunkers that didn’t fit my style. I gave the collection five stars because it’s hard to rate a collection. But read below for my specific thoughts on each story.

Admiral - great detail, I love that the entire story is more of a metaphor for Nisha’s feelings about her other and her seemingly dead-end life. But the details of this story are what get me - I can easily picture every moment, every scene, every character. Great descriptions and characterization. I love that Gretchen ends up being more than what you expect of her - recognizing Admiral - and making Nisha realize that she is just as bad in terms of holding on to the past and feeling stuck. The author writes stories about technology upgrades and how they affect the world. This is an interesting take on the science of cloning and what that could mean to the people it affects.

Year of Silence - love the set-up of this story, broken into numbered sections, reading like chapters. The concept of the silence is interesting and I love what the silence brings out in people. I think it speaks to human nature as well that we found something pleasant and immediately wanted to capitalize on it - making it the norm, trying to create the silence ourselves. I love the dichotomy of the silence and noise - the silence bringing about a dreamlike, meditative state and the noise bringing on passion and healthy disruption. Although the silence was appreciated, the beauty of the noise was missed. It’s a sci-fi-esque story that is real. It adds an interesting element - moments of silence and then clamor - that can’t be explained but it’s happening in our real time in our real world with real consequences (both positive and negative). I appreciate that the author didn’t feel the need to try and create an entirely new world to get his point across.

Galatea - I know upstate NY and I know the winters there. I could very vividly picture everything in this story. There was a lot of beauty in the writing but I did not like the female protagonist. She was written beautifully but I felt she was not strong and I wanted her to be stronger. I felt that she could have been. But I think her relationship with William Bell reminds me of how I felt about my college boyfriend and the strange quirks he had that I took as normal because my connection to him was so strong.

Man and wife - again, I love realistic stories that have just one thing different than what our reality is. The story felt pleasantly uncomfortable especially the parts that showed the age differences in such stark contrasts. I felt like Mary Ellen’s character could have been explored a bit deeper in terms of her own levels of independence and rebellion. The ending wasn’t a huge surprise, but could have been set up better.

Virgins - I just kept waiting for the other shoe to drop throughout this entire story. I knew from the beginning it was not going to end well and I squirmed as I read every page. I felt for the girls and I wanted to wrap them in a hug and tell them that everything was going to be ok. I knew girls like this growing up and in college and I felt sad at the end of this knowing that there was nothing that could have changed the ending.

Closely Held - I found the protagonist hard to like or to feel empathy for. And I was frustrated for his relationship with Molly. The story was well-written as I did enjoy the prose and felt that certain parts (like the bits about him and Sorel diving in to the code) were beautifully written. But the story itself didn’t resonate with me.

May we be forgiven - I got about halfway through the story and truly felt that the main character had multiple personalities. As in his brother and he were the same person and his wife and Jane were one and the same. Or Jane was made up. But then I read the author’s notes and that theory didn’t make sense. So do I like the story more for what it is or for what I made it out to be? Jury is still out...

From the desk of Daniel Varsky - I enjoyed this story. Not my favorite but not my least favorite either. I liked that it takes a look at Chilean history (which is not something we hear a lot about in the US) and I liked that the main character and Daniel had their one beautiful in-person encounter. This read like a memoir and I appreciated that realistic style.

King of Sentences - not my cup of tea at all...I felt that the prose was trying too hard and I found myself skimming through the story to get to the actual plot. I liked the concept of breaking writing down to its barest form - sentences - but I couldn’t get on board with the hipster writers and the kooky writer. The moral of the story - don’t meet your heroes because they won’t always live up to your standards - is a good one and I think the story accomplished that. But as a writer, I found myself really disliking the main characters. They reminded me of pretentious classmates from college.

The Worst you ever feel - I really enjoyed this story. I’m a fan of WWII and holocaust stories and the way that this interweaves music with the stories of the past, I found particularly magical and sad.

Wizard of West Orange - the concept of this story was interesting - you have a science facility at the height of the inventions age coming up with crazy, out there ideas and yet the ideas are still meant for money-making schemes. The passion of the field is evident in the writing but I found myself skimming sections as the style bored me a bit.

Nawabdin Electrician - this story has a twistiness to it. The idea of at what point are your moras looser than the next guys...Nawab is a good guy and has good intentions but goes the easiest route to accomplish his goals. So what makes the thief any worse than him? It’s an interesting concept to explore and like the story.

Child’s Play - I Really love the story because I am someone that works with kids and as an adult looking at kids and how they play and what they deem as playful and cruel is very interesting. I think the story really defines that development in an innocent but conniving style. We’ve all had that experience where we look back at some thing that happened to us as kids or a choice that we made when we were kids and when we have time to reflect upon it we realize that there was something not quite right about the whole situation.

Vampires in the lemon Grove – this is a great story because you think it’s going to go one way and you think it’s going to be Clyde who breaks first and then when it ends up being his wife that causes him to spiral out, it’s a bit of a twist. Not a huge one but enough to keep the interest of the reader. And I love stories where different creatures live amongst us.

Puppy - another great one. I find it really interesting that each mother felt that they were doing the best that they could for their family and yet we are extremely Jaggie of each other as well. For both positive and negative reasons. I think the story really touches upon human nature and the way that we view people who are different than us before we know the full story. I also love that the author didn’t feel the need to put in too many details or backstory and yet could still give us very full robust pictures of each character.

Quality of Life - really love this story too. I love the idea that essentially she is in an abusive relationship dealing with power and control and it takes her as long as it does to fully become aware of it. And by that point she’s too far in to even know how to get out of it. Again, I felt the author did a really good job of keeping the story simple and yet complex so that it is easy to read and draws you in right from the beginning. The story is truly about the two characters and not so much about the details of where they live, what they do or the other mundane-ness that could clog up the story. Mr. Fulger is written in a way that makes you comfortable at first but slowly you begin to see how much control he has and how manipulative he is. You’re left wondering who he is and what his past is like. I do also like that you don’t really know if he’s married or has a family or what he does when he’s not in town. It’s an interesting take on an abusive relationship because she really doesn’t have anything to complain about on the surface and yet her quality-of-life is that she is under the control of a man and is unable to make her own decisions.

Missionaries - this collection is definitely ending on a high note for me because this was a Another story that I really enjoyed. I really liked seen the dichotomy between Joseph and Case - one missionary who is only in it for the guts and glory and the other who truly believes in the mission. Definitely got some homosexual vibes from Joseph but I like how that wasn’t main theme that the story centered around. The author really made the focus About morals and values and how you stick with them (or not) even with the influence of others. End it gives you insight into the job of a missionary which for me, would be the last thing I ever want to do. The idea of going door to door and knocking on strangers doors and attempting to convert them terrifies me and I can only imagine the kind of people that take that on whether they want to or not as you can see with Case and Joseph.

Straightaway - I liked the characters and the mystery behind what was actually in the oil drum. The story is an interesting insight into what seems like a daily routine for these guys and then something inserts itself into that routine that could change everything. I actually wanted the story to continue - see what happened to them.

Bible - it’s amazing what the love of a parent can do. In this story you see two sides of it. I enjoy short stories like this that don’t need to be plot-driven and don’t need a big location or set changes to tell the story. And yet you’re drawn into both of these characters lives and you’re rooting for both of them even though they both have flaws.

[Chad · Rating 4 out of 5]

As is the case with every volume of "Best American", this year's edition is filled with all quality writing. Not every story will appeal to every reader, nor did every story appeal to me, but I can't say anything in here just didn't work. Again, it's all quality writing.

That said, the stories from this series can usually be broken down into three categories, "Meh", "Decent", and "Great", and the 2008 edition is no different.

The Great
There were a handful of stories that really jumped out at me, and if everything else had sucked, it was worth my time to find them. My favorite, hands down was George Saunders' Puppy which managed to catch me off-guard without any obvious twist. Its multiple perspectives play off of one another rather effectively in building to a heartbreaking conclusion. I also quite enjoyed Danielle Evans' Virgins which offers a strong, yet flawed protagonist straining against peer expectations and inevitability. The King of Sentences, from Jonathan Lethem, is slight, but just clever and odd enough to be quite memorable. I'd also include Daniyal Mueenuddin's Nawabdin Electrician whose main character reminded me a great deal of V.S. Naipaul's Mr. Biswas. Oh, and I also rather enjoyed the musically themed The Worst You Ever Feel from Rebecca Makkai, which captures in words the joy and sorrow of playing the violin. And finally, I have to mention Alice Munro's Child's Play, a dark trip down a girl's memory lane with another unexpected conclusion that stuck with me.

The Decent
This volume earned 4 stars, but I'll admit I'm less in love with this collection than those of the past, mostly because so many story fit into this category. These are all effective stories, but none of them really crossed that threshold into greatness. Stories like T.C. Boyle's Admiral works mostly due to the novel collection of characters that get thrown together. Kevin Brockmeier's The Year of Silence is almost great, with its mysterious premise, but falls flat in its closing moments. Also interesting, due to novel premises, were Steven Millhauser's phantasmagoric The Wizard of West Orange, and Vampires in the Lemon Grove which isn't quite as good as her Werewolf story from last year. Nicole Krauss's From the Desk of Daniel Varsky begins with beautifully quirky language, but doesn't go anywhere interesting after the first few pages. Katie Chase's Man and Wife is like a wierd and creepy prequel to Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaiden's Tale". There are also moderately entertaining stories from A.M. Homes, Bradford Tice, Miroslav Penkov, and Mark Wisniewski, and so on. Probably 80% of the stories fit right into this category, including a brief little nugget from Tobias Wolff.

The Meh
Which brings us to the 'meh', which aren't bad, just forgettable. Such stories included Karen Brown's Galatea about a woman's disfunctional attraction to a maybe-serial pervert; Allegra Goodman's Closely Held, about an apathetic and lovelorn tech-industry millionaire; and Christine Sneed's Quality of Life, which, quite honestly, I'm having trouble remembering off the top of my head.

Would I recommend this edition? If you read these regularly, then yes. You know the drill concerning what quality to expect. If you've never read the "Best American" brand, I'd probably steer you to a past volume if I really wanted to show off what the series is capable of.

[Roberts · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was, so far, the 'Best American Short Stories' edition/year I liked least. There were a lot of stories that were just so-so, and a couple that I just didn't like at all. I'd probably give it a 3.5 stars, but the last set of stories I read were some of the better ones, so that tips it to a '4' instead of a '3'.

My least favorite -- 'Puppy' -- was one the guest editor (Salman Rushdie) specifically pointed out as a good story, which surprised me because in his introduction he said "I do dislike the creative writingese that infects many short stories nowadays...". I'm not sure exactly what he meant by that, but 'Puppy' was peppered with no fewer than 3 uses of the phrase "ha ha ha" (by 2 different characters no less!) and one of "blah blah blah", with a bunch of "ho HO"s thrown in for good measure. That may not be 'creative writingese', but it was certainly annoying.

Now, onto the good stories. Not as many as in other editions, but still some good ones. Here's my favorites...

Child's Play by Alice Munro. I had to read this twice. In 2 days. The first time we were driving back from a long roadtrip and i was distracted, and read the story in bits and pieces. It was only when I got to the end that I started to think, 'huh, this may be a really good story'. So I read it again a couple days later. Disturbing. That's one way to describe this story. But well-written - draws you in, makes you think.

The Wizard of West Orange by Steven Millhauser. Really interesting, written in a choppy, journal-like manner. What if Edison tried to invent a 'haptograph', to transmit touch, analogous to a phonograph (sound) and kinetoscope (sight)? Great descriptive imagery of what the experience would be like.

Closely Held by Allegra Goodman. Programmer/founder of an internet start-up is discontent, despite his impending success. The story captured the rather mundane work of a programmer pretty well (making it sound interesting); not sure how 'accurate' the start-up description was, maybe the story was a bit over the top, though it can get crazy. But overall it was a well-written, interesting story.

There were a few good stories that were either set overseas, or written from the perspective of someone from another country...

Buying Lenin by Miroslav Penkov. The grandson of a staunch, life-long communist goes to capitalist America for college.

Vampires in the Lemon Grove by Karen Russell. The title pretty much says it all. I liked it more than I was expecting to.

Nawabdin Electrician by Daniyal Mueenuddin. Indian fix-it man who knows how to work the system.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's been my january ritual for the past several years to start the best short story anthology. ..this year it took 4 months of intermittent reading to complete. Salman Rushdie was the guest editor, and I must say, I liked his overall taste much more than last year's, Stephen King. There are rarely any "bad" stories in this long-running series, of course. The permanent editor reads thousands of submitted entries and transmits a fraction to the guest editor who makes the final choices, which include a mix of cherished authors and discoveries. In the former category, please find T.C. Boyle, AM Homes (am I attracted to writers who use initials?), Nicole Krauss, Jonathan Lethem, Alice Munro, George Saunders and Tobias Wolff.

Among the discoveries (to me) were Kevin Brockmeier, whose story "The Year of Silence" had both the frisson of shock that great stories have, as well as an interesting approach to form; Bradford Tice, whose story "Missionaries" dives improbably into the interpersonal relationship of two Mormon door-knockers, one a horndog, the other uncertain; Steven Millhauser, who creates a fantastical, yet believable world inside Thomas Edison's NJ laboratories in "The Wizard of East Orange.... to name a few.

These stories are less about structure and more about premise, a leap of "what if..." imagination... What if Edison had tried to invent a method to modify the sense of touch? What if three louts are asked to cart away a heavy drum that probably contains a body, no questions asked? What if a rich couple have their prize dog cloned? What if a town is enveloped in silence? What if a "special needs" child drives two girls crazy?

Not easy to make it all work, to maintain a the suspension of disbelief, and still manage to craft those sentence pearls that connect to form a thing of beauty that grabs you around the neck in 15 pages. Wish I could.

[Harley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jan 09: I keep all the editions of these when I buy them, and traveling would be too rough on this heavy paperback, so it waits for me at home.

July 20: One of the fun things about this series is that the guest editor flavors the final selections. There is a series editor who reads thousands of stories, and delivers at least 120 to the guest editor, who reads those and maybe others that he or she has found, and winnows it down to about twenty stories. I would say that a quarter of Rushdie's choices have an element of the bizarre or otherworldly, like a vampire love story, or the goings on in a think tank/inventor's haven in West Orange, NJ. And there were some deeply satisfying stories of the goings on in relationships, between friends, among families, between cultures.

The story by Katie Chase, "Man and Wife," was just perfectly satisfying, about a young girl in a culture like our own, but slightly shifted, so that marriages are arranged at an early age. The familial caring and humor in "Buying Lenin" was enchanting. "Admiral" was slightly nerve-wracking, the way T.C. Boyle always manages to make me feel.

Now, on to catch up with the 15 or so previous volumes that I have picked up and added to my shelf, before the 2009 selections come out. Actually they will be stories from 2008, published in 2009. I just looked it up. Alice Sebold is editing, and it will be available October 1.

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really like this series. The different editors each year ensure that (across the series anyway) you don't get that sense that you're just rereading the same story over and over again. I have to admit that I accidentally left the book on an airplane, so I didn't read the last two stories. But, even if they were exceptionally good or exceptionally bad, my rating would probably still stand.

My one issue was with the story, "Missionaries". I'm OK with the fact that one elder was portrayed as a fornicating, baptize at any cost, don't wear your garments, suck up to the mission prez kind of guy. I'm sure that these kind of missionaries do exist somewhere (although I am highly doubtful that they could all be the same person) and I understand that you get a better story writing about the exception rather than the rule. But, I just couldn't get past all of the inaccuracies. As a non-member, it would be hard to get it pitch-perfect, but "Elder Jeff" and "President Robert" is just hard to read without giggling. Every word just felt inauthentic to my experience (yes, I know that the fornicating missionary SHOULD feel inauthentic to my experience, but I could easily imagine a story about a completely amoral missionary that felt grounded in the reality of what happens).

Digression aside, I love short stories (they fit well with my attention span) and think that this series is a good way to get a feel for what is happening in the world of the short story.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I guess my problem is that I'm not "literary" enough. But I like to think that I know a good story when I read one. And there were, probably 4 in this collection of 20. Maybe five. So I would have to go with 1/4th of the stories that I enjoyed. Or understood, maybe.

I've been taught maybe things about the art of crafting a short story, and because of that I've had the time to develop my own opinions based on the opinions and teachings of others. One thing that I believe must hold true in a short story is that the main character must change, in some way. It doesn't have to be a big change, or a life-altering change, but I feel that if a character doesn't change -- if he is exactly the same at the end of a story as he was at the start -- then what was the point of wasting my time by writing about it?

A lot of these so-called short stories felt more like character studies. There was, for instance, no story. There was no plot, no action, no change -- it was just a piece of writing about a person who did this or did that or thought about something and interacted with someone and then it ended.

If these are the "best American short stories" then I feel sad. Because there has to be better storytelling out there, clearly untapped. Considering that many of the authors represented here are published over and over again.

[Allison Nack]

The best BASS collection in years, mainly due to the fact that Salman Rushdie is the editor. It's obvious that he chose these stories to form a book that culls from an incredible diversity of voices and styles, not merely stories that he "likes" or that are similar to his own work. Stephen King, last year's editor, could take a huge lesson from this. It certainly upped my enjoyment factor that some of my favorite writers are included this year: A.M. Homes, Alice Munro, Tobias Wolff, and T.C. Boyle. And one of the best things about BASS is discovering new writers, one of whom landed here with her first published story -- an almost unbelievable accomplishment. As far as I know, the stories in BASS are still chosen blind, meaning Mr. Rushdie had no idea who he was reading throughout the extensive selection process, further exemplifying his prowess in spotting the gems. As always, one of my favorite things about BASS is reading the author bios at the end, where the writer explains the genesis of his or her story, giving a behind-the-scenes look that a reader does not often have the opportunity to see.

[Mollie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read these collections most years I can get my hands on it, and this is one of the best I can remember. Almost every story is worth reading and a few are absolute standouts. I particularly liked The Year of Silence, Man and Wife (though..yuck), Buying Lenin, and Bible. It was a bit strange to see some of the choices from the New Yorker, which I read religiously, especially The King of Sentences, which was one of my least favorite of the whole year. I also didn't particularly like Child's Play, though I guess it did get under my skin and nestle there a bit, which perhaps was the point.

The one weird thing is the story Admiral, which I read one night in bed, then woke up the next morning and read in the paper about a cloned labrador, and kind of freaked out.

[Billie Pritchett · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Best American Short Stories series is always worth reading as a digest of a year's good stories. However, some volumes are not nearly as good as others due to bad picks from the guest editor or the series editor, or just a bad year for published short stories in general. I don't know which was the cause for the quality of this volume, but few stories I would consider memorable, vivid, or enjoyable. Those that were really good, though, were Miroslav Penkov's "Buying Lenin;" Karen Russel's "Vampires in the Lemon Grove," and Christine Sneed's "Quality of Life." "Buying Lenin" is about a young man and his relationship with his grandfather. "Vampires..." concerns the eternal romance between two vampires. "Quality of Life" involves a young woman and her relationship with a much older man. And of course there were other enjoyable stories, but which were not as pleasant as these.

[Derek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Skip both introductions by Heidi Pitlor & Salman Rushdie. Skip nothing else, even the Contributors notes are worth the read.
I must admit, this is the first book in the Best of American Short Stories series I've ever read, but, damn, what a collection. It's taken me a month to read this whole book. You can't even begin to imagine the amount of restraint I've had to put up with--restricting myself to just one short story a day despite the temptation. But that's the only way to read this book, it's not one to be devoured in one sitting.

My favourites?
ADMIRAL by T. C. Boyle
THE YEAR OF SILENCE by Kevin Brockmeir
VIRGINS by Danielle Evans
THE WORST YOU EVER FEEL by Rebecca Makkai
THE WIZARD OF WEST ORANGE by Steven Millhauser
NAWABDIN ELECTRICIAN by Daniyal Mueenudin
and VAMPIRES IN THE LEMON GROVE by Karen Russell.

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rec. by: Books and More in Yachats, Oregon, and a stellar Table of Contents
Rec. for: Seekers after excellence in brief

Standing with my wife and son in a lovely little bookstore on the Oregon coast called Books and More, on a stormy December day, I felt a strong urge to buy something—and so The Best American Short Stories 2008 found its way into my hands even if, on a sunnier day, I might have passed over it.

Reader, skipping this volume would have been a mistake, one I'm glad I didn't make. The Best American Short Stories 2008 (edited by Booker Prize-winner Salman Rushdie along with series editor Heidi Pitlor) was an excellent snapshot of a very good year for (North) American (English-language) literature.

It was a tumultuous time. Pitlor's Foreword admits that even in 2008 (and how much more so today?),

More than ever, we are a messy nation of opposites, a rumbling extended family full of warring aunts and uncles, nieces holding grudges, stepsisters and half brothers, brothers and sisters who are inseparable and others who don't speak. In this election year, it seems that stark contrasts are the norm.
—pp.ix-x

It is important to acknowledge such factors—and not just for how they affect fiction. Salman Rushdie's Introduction does so as well:

True, America has become fearful of late, its doors have not been open to the world's huddled masses in the old, generous way, but still the world's stories somehow continue to make their journeys to America, and metamorphose, with remarkable ease, into new American tales.
—p.xii

How much more so today? To me, The Best American Short Stories 2008 seems even more timely now than when it was compiled.

*

The stories, and my individual comments (brief ones, I promise!) on each, are:

"Admiral," by T.C. Boyle
Nisha "had to hide" (pp.7-8), when all the Strikers wanted was to rehire their favorite dog-sitter. This one reminded me a bit of Nancy Freedman's much earlier novel Joshua, Son of None—that is, if Joshua had been a dog.

"The Year of Silence," by Kevin Brockmeier
I enjoyed Kevin Brockmeier's novel The Brief History of the Dead back in 2013. "The Year of Silence" is episodic, intentionally so, the episodes themselves varying in length like the silences that so captivated the city—a place never named.
But some people are never satisfied...

"Galatea," by Karen Brown
William Bell was no sculptor—and, if anything, this Galatea made herself.

"Man and Wife," by Katie Chase
People seem to be able to get used to anything, however dystopian.

"Virgins," by Danielle Evans

{...} there was no such thing as safe, only safer {...}
—p.83

"Closely Held," by Allegra Goodman
Orion was very good at one thing—and it wasn't physics.

"May We Be Forgiven," by A.M. Homes

Why do they still live here? Their children are grown, the place is empty, the dog is old.
—p.112

George has no history of violence, but his gray adultery and tawdry mental illness, and the primacy of The City (New York City, that is) yet again... I remember thinking, is this the best that mimetic fiction has to offer?
And then the whole thing twists...

"From the Desk of Daniel Varsky," by Nicole Krauss, on the other hand, rather redeems mimetic fiction:

On the way, I stopped to visit my grandmother, who lived in a nursing home on West End Avenue. She no longer recognized me, but once I'd gotten over the sadness of this I found myself able to enjoy being with her.
—p.125

and then

The only moment of disharmony came when I raised the subject of Neruda, the one Chilean poet I knew, to which Daniel responded with a flash of anger. Why is it, he asked, that wherever a Chilean goes in the world, Neruda and his fucking seashells have already been there and set up a monopoly?
—p.127

"The King of Sentences," by Jonathan Lethem, is the first story in The Best American Short Stories 2008 that I'd read before. It's a creepy tale about the lengths to which people will go, both as fans and as the recipients of such adulation, that also reminded me a bit of John Tottenham's novel Service, which I read in January 2026—like Tottenham's crotchety (and not at all subtle) protagonist, Lethem's narrator and his partner work in a bookstore, about which he says,

Meanwhile, every customer robbed us a little. At the cash registers we spoke sentences tailored to convey our disdain, in terms so subtle it was barely detectable. If our customers blinked a little at the insults we embedded in our thank-yous, we believed, they just might be worth of the marvels their grubby dollars entitled them to bear away.
—p.135

"The King of Sentences" also contains this prescient passage:

{...} we were also sure that sentences of the right quality could end this hideous endless war, if only certain standards were adopted at the higher levels. They never would be. All the media trumpeted the administration's lousy grammar.
—p.135

"The Worst You Ever Feel," by Rebecca Makkai
Radelescu the nine-fingered violinist and Aaron, his young observer...

Except that escaping is its own special brand of pain, and tied to you always are the strings of the souls that didn't save themselves.
—p.157

"The Wizard of West Orange," by Steven Millhauser is a telegraphic work of scientifiction—it's written in short bursts, as a journal or diary, about a plausible extension of an historical Wizard's feverish inventiveness.
Millhauser's story is also coy, reflecting its proper Victorian narrator—Kistenmacher's experiments with the "haptograph" do not explore the same obvious implications of the technology in the same depth as, say, the hard SF film Brainstorm did in 1983.

"Nawabdin Electrician," by Daniyal Mueenuddin
A self-made man, substantial, with a motorcycle and a family—what need he for forgiveness?

"Child's Play," by Alice Munro
It's hard to forget those days at summer camp, at least if you've ever been sent to one. I know that feeling, but never got up to the sort of thing that those rhyming twins-for-the-week Marlene and Charlene did.

"Buying Lenin," by Miroslav Penkov

"Pigs like American money."
—p.234

Not everyone cheered when the Communists fell. Not Grandpa.
Penkov's is an ultimately touching story about an old crawfish who pinched the wrong stick...

"Vampires in the Lemon Grove," by Karen Russell was another re-read for me in The Best American Short Stories 2008, of the few I'd run across before.
The old vampire's name is Clyde, though he'd like to choose another one, and that's not even the most ridiculous thing about him.
And yes, there's a reason that Clyde and his wife Magreb are sojourning in that lemon grove...

"Puppy," by George Saunders

This time would be different, she was sure of it.
—p.262

Marie, mom, has no idea what's coming, as she drove the kids in her Lexus out past the cornfields to look at a puppy.
Neither do we.

"Quality of Life," by Christine Sneed
Lyndsey and Mr. Fulger have an... arrangement. It seems false to call it a relationship.

"Missionaries," by Bradford Tice
Joseph and Case are Saints—sober young men doing the work of the Lord—but that doesn't mean they cannot sin.

"Straightaway," by Mark Wisniewski
Five hundred bucks just to haul an oil drum off to the dump—without opening it? Yeah, I wouldn't want that job, no matter how fine the customer. But some people make their own damn luck, I guess.

"Bible," by Tobias Wolff
I don't think I could be—could ever have been—as strong as Margaret.

Wolff's is the last story in The Best American Short Stories 2008. After that, a dozen or so pages of Contributors' Notes, a list of a hundred "other distinguished" stories from 2007, and a final list of mailing addresses for various short-story markets (which I'm sure is woefully out of date) round out this anthology... which was, I have to say, a remarkably strong compilation.

A lot of that, I'm sure, is due to Salman Rushdie's keen eye—but for whatever reason, I'm really glad I picked this volume up when I did.

*

(Table of Contents adapted from the version at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Library site, this time.)

[Jillian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Almost all of these stories were a pleasure to read, though some lost strength in their endings. A collection to keep.

My favorites:
"The Worst You Ever Feel" Rebecca Makkai
"The Year of Silence" Kevin Brockmeier
"Buying Lenin" Miroslav Penkov

The stories I also liked quite a bit:
"Admiral" T. C. Boyle
"Man and Wife" Katie Chase
"From the Desk of Daniel Varsky" Nicole Krauss
"The Wizard of West Orange" Steven Millhauser
"Vampires in the Lemon Grove" Karen Russell
"Child's Play" Alice Munro
"Puppy" George Sanders
"Missionaries" Bradford Tice

[Knucklefish · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book for a short story class I took, but I felt compelled to finish reading it on my own. These books are a great way to see what's happening in the world of short fiction, with a mix of well-known and obscure writers. My personal favorites were "Man and Wife," "Virgins," "Buying Lenin," and "Puppy." Some are creepy, some are touching, and some are just plain weird. And I mean that in a good way!

[Anina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read in bed while deliriously ill with bird flu or something. Pretty much 100 percent of the stories were depressing this year. I don't really like fall.

[Walter · Rating 4 out of 5]

For the first time in years I read more of the entries than I skipped. 2008 was a good year!

[Margie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good, but perhaps not my favorite. Some gems.

[Joe Ruskey · Rating 4 out of 5]

5 Stores That Deeply Impressed Me:

Admiral by T.C. Boyle
Puppy by George Saunders
Bible by Tobias Wolff
Child's Play by Alice Munro
The King of Sentences by Jonathan Lethem