A review by bufally47
The Best American Short Stories 2015 by T.C. Boyle, Heidi Pitlor
3.0
I’m never sure how to rate collections, as they’re meant to cover diverse styles and topics. The inevitable three stars? Some of these stories reminded me how fresh and insane short fiction can be. I liked that the introduction pointed to Poe’s definition of a short story as “of a length to be read in one sitting, an hour’s entertainment.” That primed me to at least attempt to savor each.
Stories that knocked my socks off: Bride; Kavitha and Mustafa; The Siege at Whale Cay; Jack, July
Knocked my socks half-off: The Largesse of the Sea Maiden; About My Aunt; Sh’khol
Stories that made me remember everything that’s bad about short stories: Motherlode; You’ll Apologize If You Have To; Fingerprints
Aren’t we collectively over stories about road-trips and con men and slightly-unhinged tough guys? Evidently not, unfortunately. However, there was certainly no blatantly terrible writing in the collection, just the occasional trope and occasional dwelling on too-real muck like missing fathers and children in comas. Such muck might be handled with more grace in novel form. For stories, I prefer the outlandish or foreign-and-jarring.
Stories that knocked my socks off: Bride; Kavitha and Mustafa; The Siege at Whale Cay; Jack, July
Knocked my socks half-off: The Largesse of the Sea Maiden; About My Aunt; Sh’khol
Stories that made me remember everything that’s bad about short stories: Motherlode; You’ll Apologize If You Have To; Fingerprints
Aren’t we collectively over stories about road-trips and con men and slightly-unhinged tough guys? Evidently not, unfortunately. However, there was certainly no blatantly terrible writing in the collection, just the occasional trope and occasional dwelling on too-real muck like missing fathers and children in comas. Such muck might be handled with more grace in novel form. For stories, I prefer the outlandish or foreign-and-jarring.