On Our Shelves: 45 Favorite Short Story Collections

Lists
February 22, 2008 | 1 book mentioned 24 2 min read

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To wrap up Short Story Week here at The Millions, we conducted an informal poll of our contributors, asking them to name their favorite English-language short story collections. The results form a kind of subjective bibliography, a personal pantheon of 45 favorite collections. We’ve added links to our blurbs and reviews where appropriate. We hope this list will be useful, or at least interesting; feel free to add your own picks, and blurbs, in the comments box below.

The List:

is the author of City on Fire and A Field Guide to the North American Family. In 2017, he was named one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists.

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February Preview: The Millions Most Anticipated (This Month)

Book Previews Lists Notable Articles
February 1, 2017 | 1 book mentioned 4 4 min read

We wouldn’t dream of abandoning our vast semi–annual Most Anticipated Book Previews, but we thought a monthly reminder would be helpful (and give us a chance to note titles we missed the first time around).  Here’s what we’re looking out for this month. For more February titles — and there are a ton — check out the Great First-Half 2017 Preview.

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders:  For Saunders fans, the prospect of a full-length novel from the short-story master has been something to speculate upon, if not actually expect. Yet Lincoln in the Bardo is a full 368-page blast of Saunders — dealing in the 1862 death of Abraham Lincoln’s son, the escalating Civil War, and, of course, Buddhist philosophy. Saunders has compared the process of writing longer fiction to “building custom yurts and then somebody commissioned a mansion” — and Saunders’s first novel is unlikely to resemble any other mansion on the block. (Jacob)

To Be a Machine by Mark O’Connell: Millions staffer and author of Millions Original Epic Fail O’Connell brings his superb writing and signature wit and empathy to a nonfiction exploration of the transhumanist movement, complete with cryogenic freezing, robots, and an unlikely presidential bid from the first transhumanist candidate. O’Connell’s sensibility — his humanity, if you will — and his subject matter are a match made in heaven. It’s an absolutely wonderful book, but don’t take my non-impartial word for it: Nicholson Baker and Margaret Atwood have plugged it too.  (Lydia)

 

Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life by Yiyun Li: The Oakland-based Li delivers this memoir of chronic depression and a life lived with books. Weaving sharp literary criticism with a perceptive narrative about her life as an immigrant in America, Your Life isn’t as interested in exploring how literature helps us make sense of ourselves as it is in how literature situates us amongst others. (Ismail)
 
 

The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen: Pulitzer Prize Winner Nguyen’s short story collection The Refugees has already received starred pre-publication reviews from Kirkus Reviews and Publishers Weekly, among others. Nguyen’s brilliant new work of fiction offers vivid and intimate portrayals of characters and explores identity, war, and loss in stories collected over a period of two decades. (Zoë)
 
 
 

Shadowbahn by Steve Erickson: Well, it sounds like it’s got it all: the Badlands, the Twin Towers, Elvis’s resurrected twin brother, all put together to create what Jonathan Lethem called “a playlist for the dying American century.” He told Granta this was the best novel he read all year. (Lydia)
 
 
 
 
 

Amiable with Big Teeth by Claude McKay: A significant figure in the Harlem Renaissance, McKay is best-known for his novel Home to Harlem — which was criticized by W.E.B. Dubois for portraying black people (i.e. Harlem nightlife) as prurient — “after the dirtier parts of its filth I feel distinctly like taking a bath.”  The novel went on to win the prestigious (if short-lived) Harmon Gold Medal and is widely praised for its sensual and brutal accuracy. In 2009, UPenn English professor Jean-Christophe Cloutier discovered the unpublished Amiable with Big Teeth in the papers of notorious, groundbreaking publisher Samuel Roth.  A collaboration between Cloutier and Brent Hayes Edwards, a long-awaited, edited, scholarly edition of the novel will be released by Penguin in February. (Sonya)

 

The Schooldays of Jesus by J.M. Coetzee: This sequel to the Nobel Prize-winning South African author’s 2013 novel The Childhood of Jesus picks up shortly after Simón and Inés flee from authorities with their adopted son, David. Childhood was a sometimes thin-feeling allegory of immigration that found Coetzee meditating with some of his perennial concerns — cultural memory, language, naming, and state violence — at the expense of his characters. In Schooldays, the allegorical element recedes somewhat into the background as Coetzee tells the story of David’s enrollment in a dance school, his discovery of his passion for dancing, and his disturbing encounters with adult authority. This one was longlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize. (Ismail)

A Separation by Katie Kitamura: A sere and unsettling portrait of a marriage come undone, critics are hailing Kitamura’s third book as “mesmerizing” and “magnificent.” The narrator, a translator, goes to a remote part of Greece in search of her serially unfaithful husband, only to be further unmoored from any sense that she (and in turn the reader) had of the contours of their shared life. Blurbed by no fewer than six literary heavyweights — Rivka Galchen, Jenny Offill, Leslie Jamison, Teju Cole, Rachel Kushner, and Karl Ove Knausgaard — A Separation looks poised to be the literary Gone Girl of 2017. (Kirstin B.)

 

The Weight of Him by Ethel Rohan: Set in rural Ireland, the accomplished short-story writer’s debut novel takes on suicide, grief, overeating, and getting on. A novel that “that speaks to the essential core of our shared human experience,” says Robert Olen Butler. (Lydia)
 
 
 
 

Harmless Like You by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan: A debut about motherhood, art, and living across cultures focusing on a young Japanese woman who abandons her son. Alexander Chee says it is “the kind of novel our century deserves.” (Lydia)
 
 
 
 

Lower Ed by Tressie McMillan Cottom: Academic and Twitter eminence McMillan Cottom tackles a subject that, given a recent spate of lawsuits, investigations, and closings, was front-page news for a good part of 2016. Drawing on interviews with students, activists, and executives at for-profit colleges and universities, Lower Ed aims to connect the rise of such institutions with ballooning levels of debt and larger trends of income inequality across the U.S. (Kirstin B.)

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24 comments:

  1. Thanks for the great list! The recent Hollywood writer's strike, brought up 'back' to the Library…it's always better to have a good book then a TV remote.

  4. I have very fond memories of reading short story collections when I was a kid. Thanks for the list and reminding me about this great literary form.

  5. I second some recommendations here! But I hated the ZZ Packer collection, except perhaps for "Brownies"…

  8. Great list, but missing my two favorites:
    — "We're in Trouble" by Christopher Coake
    — "Dead Fish Museum" by Charles D'Ambrosio

    jdc.

  10. The list is pretty solid, especially with the great add of the horribly undervalued Susan Straight. She's an amazing amazing writer.

  12. I am with the Hemingway fans. He is my favorite short story writer. His tight, short wonders have delighted me since I first read them as a teenager. "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" and "Up in Michigan" are perfect examples of great short stories. I have also discovered through my two annual short story contests that the form is getting more and more attention and, judging by the recent entries to the "Warren Adler Short Story Contest," I have become convinced that there are many extremely talented short story practitioners out there just waiting for a larger market to open up. I have always loved the form and my fifth collection New York Echoes has just been released.

    http://www.warrenadler.com
    http://warrenadler.blogspot.com/

  16. Don't forget The Collected Stories of Richard Yates and First Love and Other Sorrows, Harold Brodkey. Also, Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Love Medicine, Louise Erdrich. And the wonderful Andre Dubus.

  18. Love the list, but I would add a few more titles, like “The Elephant Vanishes” by Haruki Murakami, who writes in his own, unique style. I alsko liked “Windowjumpers” by Joel Strivewell and Chuck Palahniuk’s “Haunted”, which isn’t exactly a short story collection by definition, but rather 23 stories combained in a novel – something like a modern day “Decameron”

  19. Why is Barry Hannah’s “Airships” never included on these lists? Probably the most under appreciated collection from the 20th century.

  20. T.C. Boyle! I pick up his Stories Volumes 1 &2 whenever I can’t pick between the billion books I want to read. They never disappoint! Often stunning, memorable, perfect. I’ve read a few of the oldest stories recently – amazing.

    Other omissions: Flannery O’ Connor, Adam Johnson’s Emporium, Karen Russell

    I know this is an old list, but I recently enjoyed Kelly Link’s ‘Get In Trouble’ so I imagine the other collections are worth picking up. SO many to choose… I might have to pick that Boyle Stories collection back up again.

  21. Lost in the City by Edward P. Jones (glad to see Aunt Hagar here), agree re: FOC. The China Factory by Mary Costello and Dinosaurs on Other Planets, just published in Ireland last month and coming stateside next year.

    Hawthorne! De Mapaussant! Collette! Mary Lavin!

    I would also make a case for some really great anthologies– the Oxford Book of Short Stories edited by VS Pritchett got me hooked on the short story as a teenager. Pritchett’s story Many Are Disappointed, AE Coppard’s story The Mustard Field and Mary Lavin’s MY Vocation among many many others.

  22. oh yes, Mansfield. So so many. And Charles Baxter’s story Gryphon just kills me. Salinger. Also very fond of Wilde’s stories for children– Selfish Giant etc, if you would consider including them here. Seán ´O’Faoláin, Frank O’Connor, Think I may prefer Updike’s short stories to his novels, actually– but not adequately well read with him to make a case for this. Bradbury, Wolff, Dubus, yes. Shepard. Baldwin.

  23. still obsessing. Chabon’s short stories are splendid– Son of the Wolfman and House Hunting are two of my most beloved. I really liked The Whore’s Child by Richard Russo, too.

  24. Some not mentioned that figure in my own pantheon of stellar examples:

    Vladimir Nabokov (“The Vane Sisters,” “Signs and Symbols,” “Spring In Fialta,” “Perfection,” etc.)

    Flannery O’Connor (“Good Country People, “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” “Parker’s Back”)

    William Trevor (“A Complicated Nature,” “The Day We Got Drunk on Cake,” “Mrs. Silly”)

    Shirley Jackson (“The Daemon Lover,” “The Lottery,” “Flower Garden,” “The Summer People)

    Isaac Bashevis Singer (“Gimpel the Fool”), Herman Melville (“Bartleby, the Scrivener”), William Faulkner (“A Rose for Emily”) Henry James (“A Beast in the Jungle”), Philip Roth (“Eli, the Fanatic”) Thomas Mann (“Death in Venice”) and Leo Tolstoy (“The Death of Ivan Ilyich.”)

    Favorite Lost Cause: A Visit from the Footbinder and Other Stories by Emily Prager

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Lists Prizes

The Prizewinners

Lists Prizes
October 23, 2005 | 1 book mentioned 4 min read

The list at the end of this post is arbitrary. Necessarily so, because awards, by their nature, are arbitrary. Nonetheless, after a couple of weeks full of awards news, including the inaugural appearance of the Quills, I was curious to see if all these awards are really pointing us towards good books.If we are dissatisfied with the Booker Prize or the National Book Award or the Pulitzer, the Quills, which casts the net very wide and relies on voting from the reading public, have been presented as a populist alternative. The results are less than satisfying. It is not news to anyone that the reading public likes Harry Potter and books by Sue Monk Kidd and Janet Evanovich. I hold nothing against those bestsellers, but naming them the best books of the year does little to satisfy one’s yearning to be introduced to the best, to have an encounter with a classic in our own time. We like those bestsellers because they entertain us, but while monetary success is the reward for those entertaining authors, awards have typically honored books with qualities that are more difficult to quantify. These award-winners are supposed to edify and challenge while still managing to entertain. But, as we saw with last year’s National Book Awards, readers are unsatisfied when recognition is reserved only for the obscure. We want to know our best authors even while they remain mysterious to us. So, pondering this, I wondered which books have been most recognized by book awards in recent years, and could those books also be fairly called the best books.It turned out to be a challenge. I wanted to include both American books and British books, as well as the English-language books from other countries that are eligible to win some of these awards. I started with the National Book Award and the Pulitzer from the American side and the Booker and Whitbread from the British side. Because I wanted the British books to “compete” with the American books, I also looked at a couple of awards that recognize books from both sides of the ocean, the National Book Critics Circle Awards and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. The IMPAC is probably the weakest of all these, but since it is both more international and more populist than the other awards, I thought it added something. The glaring omission is the PEN/Faulkner, but it would have skewed everything too much in favor of the American books, so I left it out.I looked at these six awards from 1995 to the present awarding three points for winning an award and two points for an appearance on a shortlist or as a finalist. Here’s the key that goes with the list: B=Booker Prize, C=National Book Critics Circle Award, I=International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, N=National Book Award, P=Pulitzer Prize, W=Whitbread Book Award, bold=winner11, 2003, The Known World by Edward P. Jones – C, I, N, P9, 2001, The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen – C, I, N, P8, 1997, Underworld by Don DeLillio – C, I, N, P7, 2004, Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst – B, C, W7, 2002, Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides – I, N, P7, 2001, Atonement by Ian McEwan – B, N, W7, 1998, The Hours by Michael Cunningham – C, I, P7, 1997, Last Orders by Graham Swift – B, I, W7, 1997, Quarantine by Jim Crace – B, I, W6, 2004, Gilead by Marilynn Robinson – N, P5, 2003, The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard – I, N5, 2001, True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey – B, I5, 2000, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon – C, P5, 2000, The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood – B, I5, 1999, Waiting by Ha Jin – N, P5, 1999, Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee – B, C5, 1999, Being Dead by Jim Crace – C, W5, 1998, Charming Billy by Alice McDermott – I, N5, 1997, American Pastoral by Philip Roth – C, P5, 1996, Every Man for Himself by Beryl Bainbridge – B, W5, 1996, Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser – N, P5, 1995, The Moor’s Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie – B, W5, 1995, The Ghost Road by Pat Barker – B, W5, 1995, Independence Day by Richard Ford – C, P5, 1995, Sabbath’s Theater by Philip Roth – N, P4, 2004, Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell – B, C4, 2003, Brick Lane by Monica Ali – B, C4, 2003, Bitter Fruit by Achmat Dangor – B, I4, 2003, The Good Doctor by Damon Galgut – B, I4, 2003, Evidence of Things Unseen by Marianne Wiggins – N, P4, 2002, Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry – B, I4, 2002, The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor – B, W4, 2001, A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry – B, I4, 2001, Bel Canto by Ann Patchett – I, N4, 2001, John Henry Days by Colson Whitehead – N, P4, 2001, Oxygen by Andrew Miller – B, W4, 2000, The Keepers of Truth by Michael Collins – B, I4, 2000, When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro – B, W4, 2000, Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates – N, P4, 1999, Our Fathers by Andrew O’Hagan – B, I4, 1999, Headlong by Michael Frayn – B, W4, 1999, The Blackwater Lightship by Colm Toibin – B, I4, 1997, Autobiography of My Mother by Jamaica Kincaid – C, I4, 1997, Grace Notes by Bernard MacLaverty – B, W4, 1997, Enduring Love by Ian McEwan – I, W4, 1997, The Puttermesser Papers by Cynthia Ozick – I, N4, 1996, Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood – B, I4, 1995, In Every Face I Meet by Justin Cartwright – B, WI find the list to be fairly satisfying, especially at the top, though it does skew in favor of men. There are also a preponderance of “big name” literary authors on this list, but it begs the question: Does the fame come first or do the awards? I’d love to hear other opinions on this list, so please, share your comments.See Also: Award Annals compiles similar lists (though much more comprehensive than this one.)

Lists Prizes
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