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The Best American Short Stories 2019

(The Best American Short Stories)

Anthony Doerr (Goodreads Author) (Editor),

Heidi Pitlor (Goodreads Author) (Editor)

3.67 · Rating details · 931 ratings · 139 reviews

#1 New York Times best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anthony Doerr brings his“stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) to selecting The Best American Short Stories 2019.

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Hardcover, 400 pages

Published October 1st 2019 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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Jul 16, 2020 Glenn Sumi rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: short-stories

I've always loved the Best American Short Stories series, but I've only reviewed one of the volumes on here. It's about time I reviewed another.

As I wrote in the earlier review, what I like most about these collections is discovering new authors. That was definitely true this year. Of the 20 authors in this collection, I had only heard of 10 before, and of those 10 I had only read books by 3 of them. So: lots of discoveries, lots of names committed to memory, lots of scanning biographies to take ...more

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Jan 09, 2020 Ann rated it liked it · review of another edition

Stories liked:

The Era by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Bronze by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Plan by Sigrid Nunez
Audition by Said Sayrafiezadeh
Natural Disasters by Alexis Schaitkin
Wrong Object by Mona Simpson

The rest of them, I read the first page or so and decided not to finish.

I didn't check thoroughly, but I only noticed one animal being harmed (in one of the stories I skimmed, not one of the ones listed above). I would prefer zero, but this is much better than the O. Henry Prize Stories of 2019, in whic ...more

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Feb 03, 2020 Chris Gager rated it really liked it · review of another edition

On loan from a friend. I've rescued a bunch of these already, but this might be the first I'll have read. One tale per day ...

1 - The Era by Nana Kwame Adej-Brenyah. Very derivative of "Brave New World," but still quite arresting. Beware of the future!

2 - Natural Light by Kathleen Alcott. I'll leave this one to the editor ... "The prose in Kathleen Alcott's haunting 'Natural Light' is always trending away from straightforward clarity toward something more interesting; the central narrative hangs ...more

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Jun 19, 2020 Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: united-states, short-story-collections, literary-fiction, 3-stars

This is my first year reading the Best American Short Stories, after having gotten more into short stories over the last few years. I am not a fan of multi-author anthologies, finding them impossible to “get into” when each new story is like starting a new book, and that’s particularly true here, where there is no unifying theme. From reading a number of both brief and in-depth reviews of this collection and its stories, I have the sense this year wasn’t the best for this series. Many readers on ...more

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Dec 01, 2019 Andy Miller rated it really liked it · review of another edition

There are many reasons I look forward to the annual collection of Best American Short Stories; it helps keep me out of reading ruts of reading the same type of fiction, it introduces me to new writers causing me to order their books(but never on Amazon), updates me on favorite writers. It also reminds me of my dislike certain types of writing; dystopian stories have greatly improved by skimming skills.
Some of my favorites from this year's collection:
Wendell Berry's "The Great Interruption" recal There are many reasons I look forward to the annual collection of Best American Short Stories; it helps keep me out of reading ruts of reading the same type of fiction, it introduces me to new writers causing me to order their books(but never on Amazon), updates me on favorite writers. It also reminds me of my dislike certain types of writing; dystopian stories have greatly improved by skimming skills.
Some of my favorites from this year's collection:
Wendell Berry's "The Great Interruption" recalls a time when spare time, story telling, carefree adventures had a bigger place in our lives, the nostalgia for those times is enhanced by the narrator telling the story years after the fact after he has moved from his small town.
"No More than a Bubble" by James Brinkley takes place in 1990s New York with two Black college students crashing a party of young professionals. As the narrator progresses through the night he routinely reflects about his dad and his advice "to be aware of crazy women, angry women, passionate women. He told me they would ruin me.'But they are also the best women' he said 'The best lovers, with a jungle between their legs and such wildness in bed that every man should experience." The narrator does end up with such a women that night, in describing how they picked the women "We both preferred girls with a certain plumpness, with curves--in part, I think, because that's what black guy are supposed to like, because liking it felt like a confirmation of possessing black blood, a way to stamp ourselves with authenticity."
"Protoza" by Ellen Martinsen Gorham with the story by Wendell Berry exemplifies the collection's diversity; contrasted by Berry's tale of old fashioned gossip and spare time, Gorham's story features 8th graders in Los Angeles where life, even passionate teenage petting, seems only an excuse to take to social media to describe, to bully, to defend.
Ursula Le Guin's "Pity and Shame" tells of a different time, a young woman in a Gold Rush town, is paid to care for a victim of a mining accident. As the story progresses we learn what brought her to the isolated town, the future of the town, and the unlikely friendship between the caring doctor and well educated accident victim.
"Anyone Can Do it" by Manuel Munoz will stay with me the longest of any of these stories. The description of a migrant worker's wife's life when she learns that her husband and others don't return from work, with hopes steadily giving way to the harshness of an immigration raid. As reality sets in she makes plans for her two young children in a place far away from her home.
"Letter of Apology" by Maria Reva seems at times Orwellian in its story of a post Stalinist time when dissent was to be handled differently than the prior methods of sending dissenters to camps. Here a KGB agent is assigned to getting a letter of apology from a poet for his politically unacceptable joke made during one of his popular readings.
"Natural Disasters" by Alexis Schaitkin tells of a young professional couple moving from New York City to the middle of Oklahoma where the husband works for oil company and the writer/wife looking to adjust. The wife's experience with a coming tornado with an escape into a storm cellar cements the contrast with her prior life.
Mona Simpson's "Wrong Object" about a psychologist's counseling of a successful and married man who eventually reveals his underlying issue, attraction to young girls, provoked me enough to reach out to an expert in the field, because the story was so real, so nuanced.
...more

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Feb 16, 2020 Lindsay rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Notes mostly for myself here, as readers don't need to be encouraged to pick up The Best American Short Stories' annual collection; these collections are a touchstone for those of us who enjoy short stories and you'll either check it out or not.
Proof in point: I read the 2019 volume strictly because of my devotion to Anthony Doerr and was curious about what kind of stories he finds entertaining/intriguing.
I liked the exposure to some legendary authors; Ursula K. Le Guin's "Pity and Shame" was ...more

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Feb 01, 2020 Robert Wechsler rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: stories

Two of the stories in this anthology stood out for me. One was Nicole Krauss’s “Seeing Ershadi,” which is characterized by an incredible flow, that is, a structure where the sections jump around in time and place, but seem organic, work without any hitch. I will certainly reread it a few times to see how Krauss constructed it. The other is Ella Martinsen Gorham’s “Protozoa,” a story of eighth graders, the kind of story that, contentwise and stylewise (dialogue that is too realistic, texting, etc ...more

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Feb 16, 2020 Sabrina rated it really liked it · review of another edition

It's a good collection. The first story was my favourite, but there were many gems throughout. ...more

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Oct 28, 2020 Beth rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

I am amazed at how much story these talented authors can get into a few pages!

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Apr 14, 2020 Jim rated it liked it · review of another edition

Hit or miss, like most of these collections. From awful to mesmerizing, and of course my mesmerizing may be your awful. One thing I look for in these yearly collections is to hear current authors writing about our culture today. There was enough of that here to work for me. Best of the best by Nicole Krauss and Alexis Schaitkin.

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Oct 03, 2019 Karen Carlson rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: story-anthologies-multi-authors

When I wrote my opening post for this year’s volume (the tenth time I've blogged BASS), I admitted I was worried since the bar was set so high by last year’s edition, and the couple of years before. And yes, this year felt like a bit of a letdown. In terms of expectations, maybe it was something like a stock market correction. Still, there’s something to find in all these stories, even though none of them blew my socks off.

What’s interesting is that, while I was a bit meh about many of them whil ...more

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Nov 01, 2019 Michael rated it liked it · review of another edition

Curated by Anthony Doerr (ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE), 2019's shorts were selected with an eye towards breaking the rules of form: multiple protagonists, pages of exposition, ambling subplots, unlikable narrators. In theory it's an exciting approach, yet while none are outright failures many read like style in search of substance. Or where there is substance, the style is less remarkable. My favorites fell into the latter camp, particularly this top five:

"Anyone Can Do It," Manual Munoz -- a ti ...more

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Jun 25, 2020 Leanne rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Highly Opinionated Review--en garde!

When I started working toward a certificate in writing at UCLA Extension, I immediately realized how little American fiction I read. The instructors do not, as a rule, assign translated fiction or even much English language works from the UK or India. It has been interesting re-reading stuff I read in high school, like Flannery O'Connor, Joyce Carol Oates, Cheever, Hemingway and Fitzgerald. It has also been interesting reading contemporary short-stories. Regar Highly Opinionated Review--en garde!

When I started working toward a certificate in writing at UCLA Extension, I immediately realized how little American fiction I read. The instructors do not, as a rule, assign translated fiction or even much English language works from the UK or India. It has been interesting re-reading stuff I read in high school, like Flannery O'Connor, Joyce Carol Oates, Cheever, Hemingway and Fitzgerald. It has also been interesting reading contemporary short-stories. Regarding learning the craft of fiction, I think it is important to understand what you like and what you don't like, since your taste will be what fuels your own work.

And my taste is definitely not American.

The problem is I am not a big fan of character-driven stories--especially those by women as they tend to go in heavy into feelings and the character's inner world, which for whatever reason, doesn't interest me. Anis Shivani wrote a great book years back about the situation in US publishing called Against the Workshop. It is basically about the way the MFA programs in the last thirty years or so have come to absolutely dominate publishing. And part of the reason why American fiction is so flat is due to the tenets pushed by these programs, which no matter how you slice it, seem to be pushing a type of "product."

This product can be described as aiming toward psychological realism (which ironically has nothing in common to how people actually think) and is something I would describe being closer to approaching a screenplay. Also, the work exists in a kind of vacuum without any reference whatsoever to other works of art. Because of the CIA's involvement in the early day's of Iowa, it is no surprise that writing cut off from movements of any kind and that prioritize individual expressions and confessionals about trauma and overcoming came to be the ticket. This last thing has led to a kind of commodification of trauma, which can be very sad to see--that is, while I think it can stand in for therapy and can be hugely helpful to people, it also has led to a depressing situation of people engaging in black and white victimization narratives and a culture of blame.

For my class we used Best American Short Stories 2019 . I found all the stories to be uninteresting with one big exception: Karen Russell's Black Corfu. This story was not assigned but it was in the textbook--so on a whim I read it and was totally bowled over!

I would say she is a great genius. I went on to buy her book Orange World and enjoyed it immensely. Weike Wang's "Omakase" and Maria Reva's "Letter of Apology" were also great stories. Reva especially, like Russell, writes in a style that references other works of art and is not a deep dive into a subjective experience. Wang's reads like memoir... and so many of the stories in this book read like memoir. I am wondering about this current aesthetic to write fiction as if it is a memoir. Real memoir is tedious enough, but shouldn't fiction aim to being art? And no, unless you are WG Sebald or Emmanuel Carrère, I don't think your memoir is art.

Other articles of interest
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertain...
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n... ...more

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Oct 29, 2020 Ryan rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: best-american-short-stories

Well, that's a wrap! I've officially read (and taken notes on) every story in every guest-edited BASS to date†. That's, what... 857 stories over 5.25 years and 42 volumes? And 106,964 words of notes?! Holy moly. It's truly strange to finally be arriving at the finish line. I just finished the last story a few minutes ago, so the expected feelings—pride, relief, emptiness—haven't really had a chance to emerge yet. Mostly I just feel a little stunned!

Anyway, the 2019 edition. Frankly, anything wou ...more

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Jul 12, 2020 Marley Richmond rated it liked it · review of another edition

This collection was more or less my first foray into short stories. As can only be expected, there were some that spoke to me and resonated deeply, and some of which I just wasn’t a fan. Editor Anthony Doerr speaks about breaking rules and boundaries in his introduction, and some of the included authors did this with grace, humor, and meaning. Perhaps I’m just not a fan of postmodern fiction, but there were some stories in this collection that broke the rules in ways that were off putting or jus ...more

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Nov 19, 2019 Susan Emmet rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Overall a strong collection.
My favorites:
Maria Reva - "Letter of Apology" - sometimes the inquisitor learns from the targeted
Jeffrey Eugenides - "Bronze" - beauty comes in many guises and may not be so beautiful
Jamel Brinkley - "No More Than A Bubble" - the young fool grows up
Said Sayrafiezadeh - "Audition" - again, the fool grows up, this time with a reduced balance in his account.
Jim Shepard - "Our Day of Grace" - beautiful interlocking stories told in letters from Civil War soldiers and their ...more

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Jan 27, 2020 Danita rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: short-stories

The first 4 or 5 stories were not enjoyable for me so I skimmed over them. They were not a style or genre I like. The remaining stories were interesting, diverse, and reminded me of why I have always liked reading short stories. I was glad I continued reading as I almost gave up after the initial disappointment in this collection. It's been a few years since I picked up the yearly Great American Short Stories collection. I need to make it an annual read again. ...more

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May 23, 2020 anna rated it liked it · review of another edition

Some excellent stories, some that once I finished the whole collection I could no longer remember. Stand outs: The Era (Adjei-Brenyah), The Great Interruption (Berry), The Third Tower (Eisenberg), Anyone Can Do It (Munoz), Natural Disasters (Schaitkin), and Wrong Object (Simpson). The introduction is excellent too.

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Feb 16, 2020 Kristin added it · review of another edition

I don’t think I can rate this one because the collection was so hit or miss, but the Ursula le Guin story (“Pity and Shame”) made the whole thing worth it - gorgeous, Munro-esque characters, then a magical twist
I never expected (had to re-read to see if I’d missed signs).

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Dec 30, 2019 James rated it really liked it · review of another edition

One of the better incarnations of this series. I found the stories by Nicole Krauss and Maria Reva particularly exceptional.

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Mar 09, 2020 Kyra Richardson rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: didn-t-finish, march-2020, unshelf-pile

Only got through 11 of 20 stories and 4 out of the 11 I didn't even finish. I'm all for a short story anthology, just not this one. Maybe the previous years have a better selection.

Also, the only reason I got this book in the first place was for my creative writing class, so... ...more

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Apr 10, 2020 Anthony rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Stand outs-
“Black Corfu” by Karen Russell
“Natural Light” by Kathleen Alcott
“Hellion” by Julia Elliot

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Nov 21, 2020 Dave Harmon rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

i only liked 4 of the stories. most of them were just abrupt and pointless, and not in an existential way either. they felt like chapters that had been lifted out of a longer novel. they just sort of end sine ratione.

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Mar 20, 2020 Tim Love rated it liked it · review of another edition

Here's my penny's worth.

"The Era" by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah - A first-person schoolkid lives in an age where children are encouraged to tell the truth, and gene-therapy is available for those with money. "I don't have any gene corrections. I wasn't optimised at all", he says. "Leslie is always telling lies about how great things are or how nice everyone looks and how everybody is special". He regularly get an injection of Happy from the school nurse.
"Natural Light" by Kathleen ...more

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Jun 12, 2020 Evelyn marked it as to-read · review of another edition

The Era by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah starts collection off with a bang. Did not expect to get drawn into the Eugenides story, but I was. Touching to see LeGuin here. Am I delusional, or once upon a time did these collections include more "unknown" writers? I would love to see that every year, especially because anthologies like Best New American Voices are gone. ...more

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Jan 01, 2020 Daryl rated it liked it

I very much liked several of the early stories in this collection, but then it sort of flat-lined for me, and I had to make myself push through the rest of it.

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Dec 19, 2020 Michael added it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-aloud-together

The best stories of this collection were those by Wendell Berry, Deborah Eisenberg, Ursula le Guin, Maria Reva, Karen Russell, Jim Shepard, and Week Wang. Definitely worth reading aloud!

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Oct 25, 2020 Anup Sinha rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I’ve been reading this series since the late 1990’s and most of them have been very good. This one is topnotch for the most part, there were several stories that stuck with me and only a couple I thought didn’t belong. Anthony Doerr put together a nice mixture of stimulating short stories on the human condition.

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Dec 26, 2019 Amy Armstrong rated it liked it · review of another edition

As a professional writer, I do my best to keep up with short stories in literary magazines and The New Yorker (which is impossible since it's almost weekly.) That said, I like to read the books in this series because these stories are considered the best of the best. Each volume has a guest editor who reviews stories chosen by the series editor. (No, the guest editor doesn't actually read *every* short story published in the U.S./Canadian market before making selections. You can read about this As a professional writer, I do my best to keep up with short stories in literary magazines and The New Yorker (which is impossible since it's almost weekly.) That said, I like to read the books in this series because these stories are considered the best of the best. Each volume has a guest editor who reviews stories chosen by the series editor. (No, the guest editor doesn't actually read *every* short story published in the U.S./Canadian market before making selections. You can read about this in the book, if you don't believe me.) Given all of this, my appraisal of this installment doesn't affect whether or not I will read or buy the next one, but if you have the option, I would pass, if I were you. Short a few highlights, this isn't a stellar collection.

This collection includes one story by Ursula K. Le Guin, who is no longer with us. I have mixed feelings about talking about dead authors because some people have a complex about that. You can criticize anyone as long as they're still around to have suicidal thoughts about it, but once they're dead, everything is sacred. I actually thought her story was decent, and completely confusing. It was also set in the mining country in Colorado, for the most part, and that was interesting and pedestrian at the same time because I live in Colorado. A lot of people in Colorado find the place infinitely fascinating when many other fascinating places exist. However, if you're writing about a mining accident, as she was, it does make sense, so I can't fault her on that. All I can say is, hey, try reading it and tell me just how entertaining you thought it was.

Julia Elliott's Hellion from The Georgia Review appears in here, and it is an excellent example of strong story, character, and voice. She also deftly makes the ordinary occurrences of every day life that so many of us take for granted extraordinary, and she does so without pretense. That story is truly something that belongs on anyone's list of Best American Short Stories.

The rest of the stories had some highs and lows for me. Mostly, I found some snippets of brilliant writing hidden within a lump of pretension and no plot. As a reader who never was interested in getting published, I would just stop reading and go about my life with most of those. The frustrating part is that I have to get work critiqued and take the feedback seriously, and I have to hear all the stupid theories people have about why something will never be published---yet, here we have plenty of examples of things that should not be published, and they're the best of the best.

In my opinion, a piece that is clearly set in the 90s should be historical, at this point. At least one story, but I believe it's actually two, is (are) clearly set in the 90s and the story isn't qualified in any way as historical. You may be thinking, "Oh you're just being petty now." People probably are just being petty picking at things like this, but I know that if I submitted a story that included references to The Wherehouse or a Walkman, I would get feedback along the lines of, "This is SO dated. Nobody is going to read this."

Maybe the reality is that if you're a writer, if whatever you're writing is what you believe to be your best work, ignore the silly things your critique partners say that bring you down. Trust your instincts on setting and style because someone out there will probably think it's amazing.

Of course, you may be wondering, why didn't I say those stories were amazing. Honestly, I didn't think they were that amazing, but not because of anything being dated. My issue is I can't even remember the titles or authors of those other stories because they didn't leave much of an impression on me beyond thinking, "Wow. Fellow critiques would have jumped all over me for this." If I'd actually enjoyed them, I would have remembered more than that. Lots of, "Yes, I'm a cool writer because I can write about attending a party where someone came home with me based on actual experience" posturing. Most of us can get drunk, take drugs, and get laid. If you can't, I'm sorry, but for the most part, it's not a challenge to do any of those things. Why am I supposed to think that's interesting? I get that Hemingway did it a lot, but he's dead. Jack Kerouac did too and he's also dead. Most people don't read either of them for fun, so maybe the public is trying to tell us something with that.

Anyway, as far as this book goes, some editions are great. This one is meh, much like the year it represents. Maybe it's a good commentary in that sense. ...more

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Oct 26, 2019 Amanda rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: 2019-books

I only enjoyed a couple of the short stories out of twenty. I have no idea how these are ranked the best. Clearly the curator has a different reading preference than myself. I know someone has to enjoy this but it was not me.

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About Anthony Doerr

Anthony Doerr

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Anthony Doerr is the author of five books, The Shell Collector , About Grace , Memory Wall , Four Seasons in Rome and All the Light We Cannot See . Doerr’s fiction has won four O. Henry Prizes and has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories, The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, and The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Fiction. He has won the Barnes & Noble ...more