Wednesday, October 10, 2018

Confederacy of Mermaid Matriarchs: Carolyn Ferrell's "A History of China"

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It's really nice when a story smacks you in the face with what it's telling you. I'm talking about lines like "She was havi...
2 comments:
Tuesday, October 9, 2018

This is all your fault. This is not your fault at all. Danielle Evans's "Boys Go to Jupiter"

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I've been reading Best American Short Stories since the 2013 edition, according to my Kindle. In those six years, this is the first year...
7 comments:
Monday, October 8, 2018

When the past is better dealt with in the present: Alicia Elliott's "Unearth"

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This is one of the shortest entries in this year's Best American Short Stories anthology, and my critique of it is going to be short, as...
4 comments:
Sunday, October 7, 2018

What if your life isn't a big joke? Emma Cline's "Los Angeles"

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I usually don't like stories where a lot of what's being said seems to be about the actual location of the story. Maybe it's jus...
7 comments:
Saturday, October 6, 2018

I attempt to review Yoon Choi's "The Art of Losing" without coming off as an insufferable, pompous ass who wants the whole world to know I speak Korean

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I've written a lot of stories with point-of-view characters from other cultures. As a translator, that's just where stories come fro...
9 comments:
Thursday, October 4, 2018

Jamel Brinkley's "A Family" and the case of the detective who tried to solve the mystery that everyone else had already solved

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When Jamel Brinkley's "A Family" cold starts, we meet a man on a stakeout. Curtis Smith is watching a mother and her son acros...
5 comments:
Tuesday, October 2, 2018

Humanity limps under the porch to die: Maria Anderson's "The Cougar"

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If my goal was to give the stories in the 2018 Best American Short Stories collection the serious consideration they deserve, I picked a har...
11 comments: