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The Best American Short Stories 2014 by [Jennifer Egan, Heidi Pitlor]

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Stephen O'Connor

The Best American Short Stories 2014 Kindle Edition

by Jennifer Egan (Author, Editor, Introduction), Heidi Pitlor (Author, Editor, Contributor) Format: Kindle Edition

162 ratings

Part of: The Best American Series (12 books)

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“The literary ‘Oscars’ features twenty outstanding examples of the best of the best in American short stories.” — Shelf Awareness for Readers

The Best American Short Stories 2014 will be selected by national best-selling author Jennifer Egan, who won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction for A Visit from the Goon Squad, heralded by Time magazine as “a new classic of American fiction.” Egan “possesses a satirist’s eye and a romance novelist’s heart” (New York Times Book Review).

Print length

389 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Mariner Books
Publication date

October 7, 2014
File size

2449 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Book Description

Mariner paperback, 2013, previous ISBN 978-0-547-55483-9

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Back Cover

The Best American Series

“People will keep reading fiction as long as it provides an experience of pleasure and insight that they can't find anywhere else," writes guest editor Jennifer Egan. The Best American Short Stories 2014 provides pleasurable and insightful fiction that compels, surprises, and engages. From a hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit to the human face of American forces who have served in Afghanistan, from the rise and fall of an indie rocker to the fate of Madame Bovary’s greyhound, the stories in this collection, according to Egan, explore “the wider world at this specific point in time.”

The Best American Short Stories 2014 includes Charles Baxter, Ann Beattie, T. C. Boyle, Joshua Ferris, Lauren Groff, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Joyce Carol Oates, Karen Russell, Laura van den Berg, and others.

[INSERT AUTHOR PHOTO] JENNIFER EGAN, editor, is the author of The Invisible Circus, Emerald City and Other Stories, Look at Me, which was nominated for the National Book Award in 2001, and the best-selling The Keep. Her latest book, A Visit from the Goon Squad, a national bestseller, won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

HEIDI PITLOR, series editor, is a former senior editor at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. She is the author of the novels The Birthdays and the forthcoming The Daylight Marriage.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00HK3EXB2
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Mariner Books; 2014th edition (October 7, 2014)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 7, 2014
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 2449 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 389 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0547819226
Lending ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #416,282 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #647 in Essays (Kindle Store)
- #709 in American Literature Anthologies
- #997 in American Fiction Anthologies

Customer Reviews:
162 ratings

About the author

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Stephen O'Connor

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STEPHEN O'CONNOR is the author of Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings, a novel, and two collections of short fiction: Rescue and Here Comes Another Lesson. He is also the author of Will My Name Be Shouted Out?, a memoir, and Orphan Trains: The Story of Charles Loring Brace and the Children He Saved and Failed, narrative history.

His fiction and poetry have appeared in The New Yorker, Best American Short Stories 2014, Conjunctions, TriQuarterly, Threepenny Review, Poetry Magazine, The Missouri Review, The Quarterly, Partisan Review, The Massachusetts Review, Fiction International, and many other places. His essays and journalism have been published in The New York Times, DoubleTake, The Nation, Agni, The Chicago Tribune, The Boston Globe, The New Labor Forum, and elsewhere.

He is a recipient of the Cornell Woolrich Fellowship in Creative Writing from Columbia University; the Visiting Fellowship for Historical Research by Artists and Writers from the American Antiquarian Society; and the DeWitt Wallace/Reader's Digest Fellowship from the MacDowell Colony. He lives in New York City and teaches fiction and nonfiction writing in the MFA program at Sarah Lawrence.

For additional information, please visit:www.stephenoconnor.net

Customer reviews

5 star		51%
4 star		21%
3 star		10%
2 star		6%
1 star		12%

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Top reviews from the United States

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torv

For readers of literary fiction.

Reviewed in the United States on May 14, 2015

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Collected in this book are some of the best stories I've ever read, but if you're not a reader of literary fiction, you might miss the point of a lot of them and think they're "dull" simply because the narrative isn't as flashy or "clever" as the stack of mystery novels you blazed through on your Florida beach vacation. If you read for good writing, powerful emotional hooks, and all around good storytelling, then this is certainly worth looking through. There is some really incredible writing on display here from some true masters of the craft. Some of these stories moved me to tears, most of them had me saying "Damn..." to an empty room after I read the last word.

Stories:
Charity
The Indian Uprising
The Night of the Satellite
After the Flood
Long Tom Lookout
Medium Tough
The Breeze
Hover
A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me
At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners
The Judge's Will
Evie M.
Kattekoppen
This Is Not A Love Song
La Pulchra Nota
God
Mastiff
Next to Nothing
Madame Bovary's Greyhound
Antarctica

8 people found this helpful

Helpful

Bill

Not the best in the series but worth a read

Reviewed in the United States on February 13, 2015

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Eagerly awaiting the latest edition in this series is something of an annual holiday tradition for me. And while not every story is a winner, there’s always at least one that justifies the effort. Often I’m introduced to at lest one intriguing author whose work is new to me. If you’re a subscriber to or frequent reader of The New Yorker, you’ve already read a fair number of the stories in this volume so it may not be worth your time.

For those new to the series, you’ll be pleased to find that in addition to the stories themselves, there is a section at the end of the book where each author tells us the story behind the story. It gives great insight into the creative process, especially useful to aspiring writers.

It’s difficult to review an anthology like this holistically as the stories are all from different writers. So any generalizations say more about the editor than about the writers. I don’t know how accurately this collection reflects “trends in modern story telling” so I won’t even attempt to address that point.

Usually there’s one story that stands out above the rest for me. Nothing had that effect on me this year but of the 20 stories here, about half were memorable. Here are my favorites.

Laura Van Den Berg, Antarctica. A woman long separated geographically and emotionally from her brother, tries to retrace his steps after his death. What she learns about her brother is not what she was hoping to find.

T.C Boyle, The Night of the Satellite. What is our responsibility to intervene when a stranger appears to be at risk? The answer to this question causes a riff between a young couple.

Charles Baxter, Charity. No good deed goes unpunished, as volunteering at a medical clinic in Ethiopia leaves the protagonist ill. With no health insurance and no job, he is driven to the black market for drugs. Desperation and vengeance lead to acts of violence in this complex take on the what it really means to be charitable.

Peter Cameron, After the Flood. An elderly christian woman tries to do the right thing (after being strong armed by her pastor) and helps an immigrant family left homeless by a flood. The imposition reveals the strains in the woman’s own marriage.

Nicole Cullen Long, Tom Lookout. A young woman is suddenly left to care for her husband’s illegitimate child while still struggling to put her own life together.

Benjamin Nugent, God. Through romantic and sexual politics on a college campus, the narrator learns something surprising about himself.

So not the best installment of the series but definitely worth a read. Looking forward to next year already!

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Kcorn

This collection of short stories soars

Reviewed in the United States on October 17, 2014

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There are not certainly a wide diversity of short stories and writing styles represented in this collection. One author, Laura Van Den Berg, even has the distinction of having her haunting story, "Antarctica" published in both The Best American Short Stories of 2014 and The Best Mystery Stories of 2014. That's quite an honor.

Readers may have the misconception that writing a short story is "easier" than creating an entire novel. But it isn't hard to find well known writers who say just the opposite: it can be extremely hard to develop strong characters and story lines - and then to hold readers' attention.

And, as editor Jennifer Egan points out, "Winning, or inclusion, is a matter of managing to delight the right combinations of tastes..." From my point of view, Egan's taste was spot on.

Here's some of my favorites (in addition to the previously mentioned "Antarctica" :

"After the Flood"

I was drawn into Peter Cameron's story after the first sentence: "The Djukanovics came to live with us after the flood because they had nowhere else to go." This story led in a different direction than I expected.

"Long Tom Lookout" is Nicole Cullen's contribution and the story of a woman, a young boy, and their unlikely circumstances tore at my heart.

"Madame Bovary's Greyhound"

Karen Russell's story focuses on ( as she describes it) "Flaubert fan fiction, about a heartbroken dog". This is my favorite in the bunch, so poignant. Somehow Russell managed to make me believe in a particular dog's rich emotional life.

Choosing the "best" stories in a given year may be somewhat arbitrary but what isn't in question is how memorable these are.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Fabulous! What a Treat

Reviewed in the United States on April 29, 2015

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Fabulous! That is a one-word review of this collection of short stories, all of which were published in 2014 and culled from a myriad of magazines. With the exception of just two of the 20 stories, I had pretty much the same reaction after reading each one: "This is the best one of all!" They run the gamut: A tale about Madame Bovary's dog, a story about a fraternity's adoration of one college woman, the end of a bitter marriage, life in a lookout tower deep in the Idaho mountains and a story about soldiers deployed in the Mideast. This is a treat...so treat yourself! I enjoyed it so much that I bought the volumes for 2013 and 2012.

2 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

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Giovanni Piazza

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 15, 2017

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Everything great

JodiR

As always thought provoking and worth a read

Reviewed in Canada on February 23, 2017

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I love these collections as they often expose me to authors I might not have read in the past and to read works that are often literary gems. As with any collection there are going to be some I like and some I do not but I feel that if you enjoy short stories that these 'Best of Collections' are fabulous.

Marc Mahler

Eines der Besten Bücher die ich je gelesen habe.

Reviewed in Germany on August 24, 2015

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Man fängt das Buch an mit der ersten Geschichte und denkt, wow, nach dieser Geschichte kann es eigentlich nur noch schlechter werden. Hat man dann einmal 5 weitere Geschichten gelesen, merkt man, das fast alles auf seine Art gut bis brilliant ist. Da sind viele Lebensgeschichten mit viel Intimität und Ironie geschrieben. Ich kann das Buch absolut empfehlen.

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Leda C.

interessanti

Reviewed in Italy on November 16, 2018

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belle storie, interessanti le scelte, sono una grande fan di Jennifer Egan in ogni caso

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Judy Mayhew

Arrived in good time. Thanks

Reviewed in Canada on July 11, 2015

Verified Purchase

Exactly as described. Arrived in good time. Thanks.