roll_n_read's review against another edition
5.0
A joy. I found myself reading about one story a day? I loved this as a collection of very different stories and voices. These stories cover a wide spectrum of topics: youth, coming-of-age, rural, urban, race, sexuality, addiction, marriage, relationships, war, the occult, mystery, art, film, drugs. Some of these stories are hard topics to deal with (like a guy plotting to brutally murder his wife). Many of these stories brought words together that made me smile or introduced new words I'd never read before. I'd recommend reading them all through as a collection, but here are my favorites—the ones that really stuck with me:
Hellion by Julia Elliott - Gators and dirt bikes and coming of age
The Era by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah - Gattaca + mood drugs = wild
Seeing Ershadi by Nicole Krauss - almost as if you could hear a soundtrack behind the words
Letter of Apology by Maria Reva - Soviet Ukraine, KGB, and a poet
Black Corfu by Karen Russell - A doctor who operates on the dead on the island of Korcula
Bronze by Jeffrey Eugenides - a college student exploring his sexuality, an older gay man and his dying friend
Hellion by Julia Elliott - Gators and dirt bikes and coming of age
The Era by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah - Gattaca + mood drugs = wild
Seeing Ershadi by Nicole Krauss - almost as if you could hear a soundtrack behind the words
Letter of Apology by Maria Reva - Soviet Ukraine, KGB, and a poet
Black Corfu by Karen Russell - A doctor who operates on the dead on the island of Korcula
Bronze by Jeffrey Eugenides - a college student exploring his sexuality, an older gay man and his dying friend
catparton_ok's review against another edition
4.0
I love short stories. I think 2007 was the first year I picked up one of these annual collections and I haven’t read every year’s since, but that sounds like a good goal. 2019’s collection was guest edited by Anthony Doerr. Great selections. I particularly liked the pieces by Julia Elliott, Jeffrey Eugenides, Manuel Muñoz, and Alexis Schaitkin. 4/5⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
gordonj's review against another edition
4.0
I love this collection and look forward to reading it every year. I get to spend time with some of my favorite writers and get introduced to new voices. In this case, it was the unfamiliar writers I was most impressed by. My favorite stories came from Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (probably my favorite in this collection), Jamel Brinkley, Manuel Munoz, Sigrid Nunez, Alexis Schaitkin, and Weike Wang. Of my favorite writers, Jeffrey Eugenides and Mona Simpson's stories are amazing, as usual.
dllh's review
3.0
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.
mulrooneyr's review against another edition
3.0
“To call it compassion makes it sound like a form of divine love, and it wasn't that; it was terribly human. If anything, it was an animal love, the love of an animal that has been living in an incomprehensible world until one day it encounters another of its kind and realizes that it has been applying its comprehension in the wrong place all along.”
milojean_reads's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
lukescalone's review against another edition
4.0
This is a good collection of stories published in periodicals throughout the course of 2019. Doerr's tastes here are more consistently solid than the two most recent years. However, at the same time, none of the stories hit quite the same highs as 2020 or 2021. Nicole Krauss's "Seeing Ershadi" is probably the one that stuck with the most.
the_dave_harmon's review against another edition
3.0
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.
sharonbakar's review against another edition
4.0
I always enjoy these collections and there were some very nice stories again in the 2019 book. My favourites: Jenn Alnady Trahan's They Told us Not to Say This; Karen Russell Black Corfu (when was one of her stories in these collections no my favourite?); Jeffrey Eugenides' Bronze; Julia Elliot's Hellion; Maria Reva Letter of Apology.
As always, it is fascinating to read about how these stories came into being - what the germ of them was. This makes the collection an invaluable learning resource for writers.
If it took me 2 years to finish this, it's only because it is the ideal book to just dip into in between other things.
As always, it is fascinating to read about how these stories came into being - what the germ of them was. This makes the collection an invaluable learning resource for writers.
If it took me 2 years to finish this, it's only because it is the ideal book to just dip into in between other things.