Customer Reviews

The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A warning to students using this as a textbook: take note that this version is the COMPACT 7th edition, and may very well be useless to you if you've been assigned the 7th edition of the text. To call this book "compact" is incredibly misleading. It's outright missing fifty-one stories and then some, compared against the regular version. The last sentence in the description on the back cover, not replicated in Amazon's product description, briefly mentions the book's creative definition of "compact." The word isn't even part of the official title, so you won't find it listed as such on Amazon's website. The only indication that this is the vastly shorter version is the cover image, which is probably too small to easily make out, and the listed word count, which only helps if you know what it's supposed to be. Had they called this a condensed or abridged version, or an excised one, the book's nature would be much clearer. Also, I might not be out forty bucks. I'm guessing I'm not the first. Good luck finding the regular 7th edition on Amazon; I couldn't.

Content-wise, I expect this to be an excellent and informative book. It has a very wide range of authors and stories, even when missing 40% of them. Were I reviewing the regular edition, I would likely give it five stars. Perhaps I will, after I'm forced to buy it too.

The book contains tons of great short stories. Unfortunately, the paper it is printed on is so thin that pages bend, and the book starts to look old after a couple of days of reading.

I mistakenly bought this text for my class at Villanova. Later, I spoke to my prof and he told me to get the original text. Unfortunately, this meant returning the text to Amazon and shelling out money to the college bookstore on campus. Used text was $50 and new text was $60. I got a slightly used text. Don't be fooled into getting this copy. I was and had to deal with the whole process of an Amazon return. Check the ISBN number and with your professor. I noticed that my class syllabus had around 1/2 of short stories not in the condensed version. If there was a link to the actual text, then I could write good things about it. Unfortunately, this text is abridged and not much good to say about except its lighter weight. The problem is that it's missing some of the crucial stories that my professor had planned us to read later in the semester.

There are two versions of this book: regular and "compact", which has significantly less material in it. If you are buying this for a class, make sure you are ordering the correct one.

This is a big book but well worth the price and time if you are a serious reader of short stories or trying to write them (as I am). You will find a comprehensive collection of the finest stories from the first efforts down to the present. There is also a wealth of commentary and criticism on the story in general and those in the collection. The Story and Its Writer has to be one of the best single sources of short story material that's yet been assembled.