Edited by critically acclaimed, best-selling author Alice Sebold, the stories in this year's collection serve as a provacative literary "antenna for what is going on in the world" (Chicago Tribune). The collection boasts great variety from "famous to first-timers, sifted from major magazines and little reviews, grand and little worlds" (St. Louis Post-Dispatch), ensuring yet another rewarding, eduring edition of the oldest and best-selling Best American.
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About the Author
HEIDI PITLOR is a former senior editor at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. She is the author of the novel The Birthdays and has a novel coming in 2014.
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Customer Reviews
“ It's pretty hard for me NOT to keep reading in such a collection, as I'm a firm believer that one can often learn the most from stories one may not 'like' very much. ”
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
29 of 32 people found the following review helpful
By cs211
Format:Paperback
Alice Sebold and Heidi Pitlor are to be commended for assembling an excellent collection of stories from a wide variety of different themes, styles, viewpoints, subjects, tones and genres. Often the guest editor will make a strong imprint on the collection by choosing a particular type of short story. Sebold and Pitlor appear to have taken their job very seriously this year, and have put together a volume worthy of the moniker "Best American Short Stories".
There is one story which rises far above the others, due to the writer's craftsmanship: Richard Powers' "Modulation". Powers mixes together a variety of dissimilar characters scattered around the globe and ties them all together with a science fiction storyline that conveys the power and importance of music in the present day. Powers has excellent command of the English language and keen observational skills, and it is hard to imagine how this story could be any better than it is.
Other stories that I enjoyed include:
-- "The Idiot President", by Daniel Alarcon: No, this is not a diatribe against George Bush. Rather, it is a gripping portrait of the performing arts scene in a second world country, and the struggles that actors and audience members endure for the sake of the performance. The tale-within-the-tale, or more accurately the play-within-the-story, is also engaging and features a nice plot twist and moral at the end.
-- "Beyond the Pale", by Joseph Epstein: besides being an interesting character study of the younger immigrant wife of a Yiddish author, it also illustrates how renowned artists often are famous because of the right set of circumstances, especially having the right members of an audience, and how there can be similarly skilled artists whose work fades into obscurity because of a single shortcoming in conveying the artistic work to the audience, not in the artistic work itself.
-- "NowTrends", by Karl Taro Greenfield: A lesson in how China's rapid modernization and adaption of capitalism while still within the constraints of an officially communistic or socialistic system has produced dramatic effects on (and much uncertainty about) the lives, morals and behaviors of Chinese citizens.
-- "Sagittaruius", by Greg Hrbek: a story about the process a father undergoes while learning to accept and love his less-than-perfect child. While few children will have the defect that the subject of this story does, all parents should be able to relate to the lesson in this story, as no child (or parent) is perfect.
It is hard to limit myself to just citing these stories; "Modulation" stands alone as the best story in the book, but once past that one, the other stories (with just two exceptions) were all very good. The only two stories I felt should have been omitted were Namwali Serpell's "Muzungu" and Kevin Moffett's "One Dog Year", both of which I didn't think had coherent or interesting plotlines.
2009 Best American Short Stories is definitely worth reading if you are a fan of the short story form. If you are not yet a fan, I can recommend the 2009 volume as being one of the best of the recent vintages, and a worthy entrée into the world of the short story.
There is one story which rises far above the others, due to the writer's craftsmanship: Richard Powers' "Modulation". Powers mixes together a variety of dissimilar characters scattered around the globe and ties them all together with a science fiction storyline that conveys the power and importance of music in the present day. Powers has excellent command of the English language and keen observational skills, and it is hard to imagine how this story could be any better than it is.
Other stories that I enjoyed include:
-- "The Idiot President", by Daniel Alarcon: No, this is not a diatribe against George Bush. Rather, it is a gripping portrait of the performing arts scene in a second world country, and the struggles that actors and audience members endure for the sake of the performance. The tale-within-the-tale, or more accurately the play-within-the-story, is also engaging and features a nice plot twist and moral at the end.
-- "Beyond the Pale", by Joseph Epstein: besides being an interesting character study of the younger immigrant wife of a Yiddish author, it also illustrates how renowned artists often are famous because of the right set of circumstances, especially having the right members of an audience, and how there can be similarly skilled artists whose work fades into obscurity because of a single shortcoming in conveying the artistic work to the audience, not in the artistic work itself.
-- "NowTrends", by Karl Taro Greenfield: A lesson in how China's rapid modernization and adaption of capitalism while still within the constraints of an officially communistic or socialistic system has produced dramatic effects on (and much uncertainty about) the lives, morals and behaviors of Chinese citizens.
-- "Sagittaruius", by Greg Hrbek: a story about the process a father undergoes while learning to accept and love his less-than-perfect child. While few children will have the defect that the subject of this story does, all parents should be able to relate to the lesson in this story, as no child (or parent) is perfect.
It is hard to limit myself to just citing these stories; "Modulation" stands alone as the best story in the book, but once past that one, the other stories (with just two exceptions) were all very good. The only two stories I felt should have been omitted were Namwali Serpell's "Muzungu" and Kevin Moffett's "One Dog Year", both of which I didn't think had coherent or interesting plotlines.
2009 Best American Short Stories is definitely worth reading if you are a fan of the short story form. If you are not yet a fan, I can recommend the 2009 volume as being one of the best of the recent vintages, and a worthy entrée into the world of the short story.
23 of 26 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Compared with last year's compilation, edited by Stephen King, the body count is much lower. There's less disease than usual; no cancer and only one Alzheimer's disease. Not that it's very cheerful. There's not much humor and there are are no new Perelmans, or Thurbers or Woody Allens. Sebald must prefer Kafka and George Orwell. She favors stories about helpless victims of oppressive bureaucracies.Asimov's was not among the magazines surveyed.
The plots are as follows:
Guerilla theater in South America
Middle school teachers' romantic intrigues
Viet Vet trapped by Katrina
Great neglected Yiddish writer stays neglected
Prohibition era dim young things
Oppressive Chinese bureaucracy
Unappreciated Good Samaritan
Baby is Centaur
Displaced Katrina victims
Francophile mother-in-law
More oppressive Chinese bureaucracy
Oppressive Kafka-like bureaucracy
Stands up date to help kid
Elderly billionaire is childish
Catchy tune
Homeless on the range
Hilly-billy ginseng-induced crime
Seder memories
Mechanical civil warfare
White trash in Zambia
The plots are as follows:
Guerilla theater in South America
Middle school teachers' romantic intrigues
Viet Vet trapped by Katrina
Great neglected Yiddish writer stays neglected
Prohibition era dim young things
Oppressive Chinese bureaucracy
Unappreciated Good Samaritan
Baby is Centaur
Displaced Katrina victims
Francophile mother-in-law
More oppressive Chinese bureaucracy
Oppressive Kafka-like bureaucracy
Stands up date to help kid
Elderly billionaire is childish
Catchy tune
Homeless on the range
Hilly-billy ginseng-induced crime
Seder memories
Mechanical civil warfare
White trash in Zambia
20 of 26 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I'll warn you first that I'm reviewing early and haven't read every story in the collection. Normally, I wouldn't dare review a product if I didn't have the full range of interaction with it. But with fiction I think it's notable and appropriate to offer a review if much of it is so banal and expected that one can't muster the desire to keep reading.
I'm an aspiring writer, which I know doesn't mean jack and/or squat. It does mean I read a lot, though. I would go so far as to say I RELY on The Best American series as a sort of textbook (and thankfully it's also often entertaining on levels that range from 'amazing craft' to 'that was fun'). It's THE way to understand the contours of the contemporary short-fiction world as well as basically setting the 'you must be this good' bar for writers wanting all the fame and riches writing short fiction can offer (not much, you?).
This collection? I was eight (8!) stories in before I found one that truly engaged me and MADE me keep reading (the mark of a good story, in my opinion). It's pretty hard for me NOT to keep reading in such a collection, as I'm a firm believer that one can often learn the most from stories one may not 'like' very much. So, even when I don't 'like' a story as a reader, I still finish it as a writer, ya dig? But there a handful of stories in this anthology that were so awkwardly un-engaging I couldn't keep reading. It HURT to keep reading. The first story, for instance, is from The New Yorker (meaning it HAS to be good, right?) and reads like a senile grandparent rambling about the past, but it isn't even our grandparent telling the story, so why would the reader really care for this personal-history lesson? Oh really, grandma, the theater you say, fascinating... and with paragraphs half a page long.
The stories felt like the kind of stories rewarded in fiction workshops. Well crafted, proper language, seeming by all accounts to look like a story. But many didn't feel like stories, didn't make me a part of a new world or pull me into a character's experiences or truly bring about a new insight in me. They felt like manuscripts you read because you have to for class, and then are technically sound enough there isn't much to critique there, and most people don't want to say 'this story was just boring' so everyone nods and says 'pretty good, pretty good' and the next day it's forgotten.
It seems to me there are two directions guest selectors of The Best American Series can take. Route 1) put in a ton of the expected fare from The New Yorker because they must be good to be in The New Yorker, right? 2) Actually scour the short stories from the year and try to find those gems that are truly innovative, engaging and memorable. In my opinion, Alice Sebold simply picked all the 'must be good' stories from the year and didn't really ever question whether they were actually good. Nothing wrong with this. Some people will be pleased because in many ways the stories are good (I mean, half of them were from The New Yorker, so they've GOT to be good, right?). The selections just felt safe and expected, though, which in the fiction world, to me, translates to banal and unmemorable. I guess I just prefer when editors find the more cutting edge stuff, the fiction we haven't quite seen before, the stuff that we may not even realize as we read it that in a few years we'll look back and treasure the stories as not just another anthology, but an event in our lives. I can't imagine a single story in this collection doing that for me.
To make a long review even longer and broader in scope, I don't blame Sebold for the selections. I think a better method for selecting stories is by committee, as having one author selecting seems to lead to an unreliable process when one is supposed to be selecting the best. Also, I think the sad truth is that short fiction is in a tough place. All these collections end up with stories so out-of-place bad or boring that one scratches their head, not being able to find any rationale for their inclusion--though 99% of the time they're from a has-to-be-good top literary journal--that even the tried and true 'it's just all so subjective' nonsense doesn't seem valid. And a lot of what I keep seeing published by the heavy hitters is the safe, expected fare that of course then gets re-published in these anthologies in an endless cycle of nobody seeming to question if the fiction they're being fed is actually good or not. The short-fiction world at large feels stagnant, like everyone is just doing what they've always done and what they think they're supposed to do.
To me, that's exactly what The Best American Short Stories 2009 feels like: safe, predictable, expected. Not a bad idea for dinner with the in-laws. But for fiction, especially what's supposed to be the best, it's disappointing. A shrug-worthy story is usually worse than if a writer or selector for The Best American takes chances that don't end up working out; at least then it's often memorable and interesting in the crash and burn. Instead, this anthology is just a huge shrug. Finish a story, finish the anthology, shrug and the stories are forgotten... which to me is not the mark of the best of anything, much less fiction.
I'm an aspiring writer, which I know doesn't mean jack and/or squat. It does mean I read a lot, though. I would go so far as to say I RELY on The Best American series as a sort of textbook (and thankfully it's also often entertaining on levels that range from 'amazing craft' to 'that was fun'). It's THE way to understand the contours of the contemporary short-fiction world as well as basically setting the 'you must be this good' bar for writers wanting all the fame and riches writing short fiction can offer (not much, you?).
This collection? I was eight (8!) stories in before I found one that truly engaged me and MADE me keep reading (the mark of a good story, in my opinion). It's pretty hard for me NOT to keep reading in such a collection, as I'm a firm believer that one can often learn the most from stories one may not 'like' very much. So, even when I don't 'like' a story as a reader, I still finish it as a writer, ya dig? But there a handful of stories in this anthology that were so awkwardly un-engaging I couldn't keep reading. It HURT to keep reading. The first story, for instance, is from The New Yorker (meaning it HAS to be good, right?) and reads like a senile grandparent rambling about the past, but it isn't even our grandparent telling the story, so why would the reader really care for this personal-history lesson? Oh really, grandma, the theater you say, fascinating... and with paragraphs half a page long.
The stories felt like the kind of stories rewarded in fiction workshops. Well crafted, proper language, seeming by all accounts to look like a story. But many didn't feel like stories, didn't make me a part of a new world or pull me into a character's experiences or truly bring about a new insight in me. They felt like manuscripts you read because you have to for class, and then are technically sound enough there isn't much to critique there, and most people don't want to say 'this story was just boring' so everyone nods and says 'pretty good, pretty good' and the next day it's forgotten.
It seems to me there are two directions guest selectors of The Best American Series can take. Route 1) put in a ton of the expected fare from The New Yorker because they must be good to be in The New Yorker, right? 2) Actually scour the short stories from the year and try to find those gems that are truly innovative, engaging and memorable. In my opinion, Alice Sebold simply picked all the 'must be good' stories from the year and didn't really ever question whether they were actually good. Nothing wrong with this. Some people will be pleased because in many ways the stories are good (I mean, half of them were from The New Yorker, so they've GOT to be good, right?). The selections just felt safe and expected, though, which in the fiction world, to me, translates to banal and unmemorable. I guess I just prefer when editors find the more cutting edge stuff, the fiction we haven't quite seen before, the stuff that we may not even realize as we read it that in a few years we'll look back and treasure the stories as not just another anthology, but an event in our lives. I can't imagine a single story in this collection doing that for me.
To make a long review even longer and broader in scope, I don't blame Sebold for the selections. I think a better method for selecting stories is by committee, as having one author selecting seems to lead to an unreliable process when one is supposed to be selecting the best. Also, I think the sad truth is that short fiction is in a tough place. All these collections end up with stories so out-of-place bad or boring that one scratches their head, not being able to find any rationale for their inclusion--though 99% of the time they're from a has-to-be-good top literary journal--that even the tried and true 'it's just all so subjective' nonsense doesn't seem valid. And a lot of what I keep seeing published by the heavy hitters is the safe, expected fare that of course then gets re-published in these anthologies in an endless cycle of nobody seeming to question if the fiction they're being fed is actually good or not. The short-fiction world at large feels stagnant, like everyone is just doing what they've always done and what they think they're supposed to do.
To me, that's exactly what The Best American Short Stories 2009 feels like: safe, predictable, expected. Not a bad idea for dinner with the in-laws. But for fiction, especially what's supposed to be the best, it's disappointing. A shrug-worthy story is usually worse than if a writer or selector for The Best American takes chances that don't end up working out; at least then it's often memorable and interesting in the crash and burn. Instead, this anthology is just a huge shrug. Finish a story, finish the anthology, shrug and the stories are forgotten... which to me is not the mark of the best of anything, much less fiction.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars
WHERE ARE STORIES BY USA CAUCASIAN WRITERS ABOUT USA STORIES?
I thumbed half way thru this book and have yet to come across one USA white male writing a story about some happening in the USA. Read more
Published 20 months ago by Roy Berger
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful stories
The stories in this book are beautifully written. They were chosen well and each has its own writing style. Plus the stories are short enough to finish one each night before bed.
Published 21 months ago by Nicole
5.0 out of 5 stars
Thanks to Amazon.
The double order, 2 editions of the Best American Short Stories, came promptly and in good condition.
I could not ask for more.
I could not ask for more.
Published 23 months ago by tom hogarty
4.0 out of 5 stars
A dark but entertaining collection
Most of the stories in this collection, edited by Alice Sebold, contain somewhat depressing or pessimistic subject matter. Read more
Published 24 months ago by Nate
5.0 out of 5 stars
got hooked on this series with 2007 one
what a great way to get the best short stories of each year for those of those who dont have time to read much
Published on March 2, 2011 by Indiana Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fabulous
I'm addicted to this series. I get the new one each year and 2009 was no disappointment. One of my favorite stories is Magic Words by Jill McCorkle.
Published on November 2, 2010 by Analise
3.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointing
Too many stories were odd. I read but couldn't recommend at least 6 stories in this book.
I found it disappointing and my reading group agreed with me. Read more
I found it disappointing and my reading group agreed with me. Read more
Published on October 30, 2010 by Frances Cohen
5.0 out of 5 stars
In media res
Richard Powers writes of the kind of computer site that spells music. Hackers, slackers, and crackers challenge the music industry. Read more
Published on June 23, 2010 by Mary E. Sibley
4.0 out of 5 stars
Another year's collection
As usual, the year's "best" is a subjective lot. So much of this annual anthology depends on the sensibilities of the guest editor, in this case Alice Sebold, even though much of... Read more
Published on May 21, 2010 by Anthony R. Cardno
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best one since 1993
I have been reading these anthologies since 1993. I can count on a few great stories and a bunch that are either ho hum or too bizarre. This year's collection is superb. Read more
Published on March 28, 2010 by Michael Sapko
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