Anthony Doerr, number-one New York Times best-selling author and Pulitzer Prize winner, brings his “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) to selecting The Best American Short Stories 2019.

“As soon as you complete a description of what a good story must be, a new example flutters through an open window, lands on your sleeve, and proves your description wrong,” writes Anthony Doerr about the task of selecting The Best American Short Stories 2019. The year’s best stories are a diverse, addictive group exploring everything from America’s rich rural culture to its online teen culture to the fragile nature of the therapist-client relationship. This astonishing collection brings together the realistic and dystopic, humor, and terror. For Doerr, “with every new artist, we simultaneously refine and expand our understanding of what the form can be”.

Table of Contents:

Anthony Doerr. "Introduction"

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. "The Era"

Kathleen Alcott. "Natural Light"

Wendell Berry. "The Great Interruption: The Story of a Famous Story of Old Port William and How It Ceased to Be Told (1935-1978)"

Jamel Brinkley. "No More Than a Bubble"

Deborah Eisenberg. "The Third Tower"

Julia Elliott. "Hellion"

Jeffrey Eugenides. "Bronze"

Ella Martinsen Gorham. "Protozoa"

Nicole Krauss. "Seeing Ershadi"

Ursula K. Le Guin. "Pity and Shame"

Manuel Muñoz. "Anyone Can Do It"

Sigrid Nunez. "The Plan"

Maria Reva. "Letter of Apology"

Karen Russell. "Black Corfu"

SAïD Sayrafiezadeh. Audition"

Alexis Schaitkin. "Natural Disasters"

Jim Shepard. "Our Day of Grace"

Mona Simpson. "Wrong Object"

Jenn Alandy Trahan. "They Told Us Not to Say This"

Weike Wang. "Omakase"

Full narrator list: Robert Petkoff, Heidi Pitlor, Scott Shepherd, Gabra Zackman, Kevin R Free, Sullivan Jones, Christine Lakin, Brittany Pressley, Zach Villa, Saskia Maarleveld, Ali Ahn, Robin Miles, Roxana Ortega, Wilson Bethel, Jefferson Mays, Dariush Kashani, Megan Tusing, Christopher Ryan Grant, Therese Plummer, Criena House

Listening Length

16 hours and 6 minutes
Author

Anthony Doerr, see all
Narrator

Robert Petkoff, see all
Audible release date

March 13, 2021
Language

English
Publisher

HMH Adult Audio
ASIN

B08Y2D5WGR
Version

Unabridged
Program Type

Audiobook
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Product details

Listening Length	16 hours and 6 minutes
Author	Anthony Doerr, Heidi Pitlor
Narrator	Heidi Pitlor, Robert Petkoff, Scott Shepherd, Gabra Zackman, Kevin R Free, Sullivan Jones, Christine Lakin, Brittany Pressley, Zach Villa, Saskia Maarleveld, Ali Ahn, Robin Miles, Roxana Ortega, Wilson Bethel, full cast
Whispersync for Voice	Ready
Audible.com Release Date	March 13, 2021
Publisher	HMH Adult Audio
Program Type	Audiobook
Version	Unabridged
Language	English
ASIN	B08Y2D5WGR
Best Sellers Rank	#40,137 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) #139 in American Fiction Anthologies #161 in Literature Anthologies #296 in United States Literature

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5

629 global ratings

5 star		64%
4 star		17%
3 star		11%
2 star		4%
1 star		5%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Dr.C.J.Singh.Wallia

Brilliant Short Stories that Reflect Some of the Problems Humanity Currently Confronts

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 1, 2019

Verified Purchase

The Best American Short Stories 2019
Selected by
Anthony Doerr with Heidi Pitlor

Reviewed by C. J. Singh Wallia (Berkeley, CA)

Brilliant Short Stories that Reflect some of the Problems Humanity Currently Confronts

Heidi Pitlor is the current co-editor, since 2007, of "The Best American Short

Stories" series, which have been published annually since 1915. She is also the

co-editor, with Lorrie Moore, of "100 Years of the Best American Short Stories."

(See my detailed review of this great book on amazon.com)

In her Foreword, Pitlor writes, "The stories in this volume are bold, some are

transgressive, and all are relevant to this moment of time. . . But in this time of

so much bad news about our climate, intolerance, corruption, and violence, I'm

grateful for these stories" (page xi). This reviewer is certainly grateful for these

20 highly-engaging stories; so, will be many readers.

Anthony Doerr's introduces the book by describing his earliest efforts as a child

to become a writer; efforts engagingly described with humorous self-

deprecating examples.

Growing up, "A drip-drip of uncertainty sent me to the library, where I

discovered a paperback titled 'Writing in General and the Short Story in

Particular' which claimed to reveal 'the secrets of the craft.' Though the author,

Rust Hills, sounded more like a South Dakota land feature than a short story

expert, the jacket copy explained that Mr. Hills worked at 'Esquire ' and had

discovered all sorts of famous writers, and so it was with a mix of excitement

and terror that I toted the book to my attic bedroom" (page xiv).

Doerr notes that many of the twenty excellent contemporary short stories that

he and Pitlor selected flout Rust Hills' rules. For example, "Hills said a short

story shouldn't mess with subplots, but from a certain angle, Nicole Krauss

constructs her gorgeous 'Seeing Ershadi' entirely around subplots -- three of her

first five paragraphs are spent summarizing an Iranian film. Yet, her story

utterly wrecked me" (page xviii). In the Contributors' Notes Section, Nicole

Krauss describes in illuminating details the background of her writing this story

(pp. 353-356). Contributors' Notes, a regular feature of the annual edition of

"The Best American Short" series can serve to enhance readers' experiencing the

stories. They certainly enhance mine.

Another example from Doerr's selection: "Rust Hill suggested that a short story

stick with a single point of view, but Deborah Eisenberg, in her dystopic paean

to the imagination, 'The Third Tower' leaps into a doctor's mind in two of its

thirteen sections. Without those leaps away from her protagonist's point of

view, her story would collapse" (page xviii). Another apt example.

Doerr cites many other short-stories in the book, selected by him and Pitlor, as

flouting Rust Hills' rules; in particular, stories by Wendell Berry, Kathleen Alcott,

Jenn Alandy Trahan, Julia Elliot, Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, Sigrid Nunez, Jeffrey

Eugenides, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Jim Shepard (page xix)

Next, Doerr, without naming specific rule-makers, writes, "Anyone who thinks

short stories can't or shoudn't ask moral questions about our political moment

should turn to Weike Wang's "Omasake," (page xix).

I fully agree with Doerr on flouting this rule. (See my detailed review on

amazon.com of John Truby's book "The Anatomy of Story," which emphasizes

engaging in "moral argument" as an essential element in structuring fiction, be

it a short-story, novel, stage play, or screenplay. This amazon review can be

accessed at https://www.amazon.com/review/R29NU7U6LAHGBV )

Several other short stories in the selection that flout this rule on "moral

questions about the political moment" include Maria Reva's "Letter of Apology,

" which "'presents a hilarious and heartrending glimpse of life under a regime

where it is illegal to criticize or even joke about political leaders"; and Manuel

Munoz's "moving 'Anyone Can Do It' about a woman whose husband has been

rounded up by immigration police might be set in the 1980s but could not be

more timely" (page xix).

Doerr in his highly-acclaimed novel "All the Light We Cannot See" flouts the

suggestions of the widely adopted text-book in MFA programs, Janet

Burroway's Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft, tenth edition, (See my

detailed amazon review at https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Fiction-Tenth-

Narrative-Publishing/dp/022661655X). Doerr chooses to use omniscient point

of view instead of the third-person close point of view. His wonderful novel

won the Pulitzer Prize. Great act of flouting back to the nineteenth-century

realistic novel.

Of the 20 stories selected by Doerr and Pitlor, I had already read the 4 published

in "The New Yorker," the 3 in "Zoetrope:All-Story," the 2 in "Harper's," the 1 in

"Granta," and the 1 in "ZYZZYVA." Reading the other 9 included in this

anthology was an equally engaging experience for me.

Here's the full list:

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. "The Era" from "Guernica"
Kathleen Alcott. "Natural Light" from "Zoetrope:All-Story"
Wendell Berry. "The Great Interruption" from "Threepenny Review"
Jamel Brinkley. "No More Than a Bubble" from "LitMag"
Deborah Eisenberg. "The Third Tower" from "Ploughshares"
Julia Elliott. "Hellion" from "The Georgia Review"
Jeffrey Eugenides. "Bronze" from "The New Yorker"
Ella Martinsen Gorham. "Protozoa" from "New England Review"
Nicole Krauss. "Seeing Ershadi" from "The New Yorker"
Ursula K. Le Guin. "Pity and Shame" from "Tin House"
Manuel Munõz. "Anyone Can Do It" from "ZYZZYVA"
Sigrid Nunez. "The Plan" from "Lit Mag"
Maria Reva. "Letter of Apology" from "Granta"
Karen Russell. "Black Corfu" from "Zoetrope-All Story"
Saïd Sayrafiezadeh "Audition" from "The New Yorker"
Alexis Schaitkin "Natural Disasters" from "Ecotone"
Jim Shepard. "Our Day of Grace" from "Zoetrope-All Story"
Mona Simpson. "Wrong Object" from "Harper's"
Jenn Alandy Trahan. "They Told Us Not to Say This" from "Harper's
Weike Wang. "Omakase" from "The New Yorker."

Five-star book.

44 people found this helpful

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Shelby

Honestly diverse subjects and styles - something for everyone.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 25, 2020

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No collection can be perfect, even from one's favorite author, and this collection is from disparate authors. There are a few stories that will stick with me, and a few that display what I see as the worst in MFA trends (you never want a story with a beginning, middle and end; you must advance the boundaries of literature; don't bother much with proper grammar such as quotation marks; it's all about social justice issues and/or contemplating your navel; the more unhappy the writer seems the better). Sounds like I hate it, right? No - there's a healthy mix of styles and themes, and I accept that. And it's a more honest collection than some previous issues, which were overwhelmingly political. While it's true that the subject of art often is the misery of others, and including the miserableness of ourselves, it's implausible that the "best" of any one one year could all be polemical, and this collection avoids that pitfall. But I must express my alarm that The New Yorker has three selections here (one which was fine; one which I found to be amateurish and just poorly written, and as self-indulgent as they come; and one which I will briefly critique here, which I will crown as the worst of the best ... in recent years! I've never seen such self-indulgence, such self-centered writing, such disassociation from real people and real places and real problems as in the story by Nicole Krauss (apparently a celebrated author). I don't care about the narrator (hence, the author); she has no artistic voice at all - she might as well be complaining to a friend over a latte about her miserable, upper middle class, artsy life - oh, wait, the narrator basically does that - and I don't think the author has anything to teach me about life. The "mystere" in the story, and the understated Progressive politics, as if the author thinks being Progressive is dangerous in a Trumpian age, even in literature, which is the safest repository of Progressive thinking there is, perhaps besides art, when politics in literature today is only dangerous if you are truly independent, not conformist, as she is. Well, it's The Best American Short Stories! Somewhere John Gardner is crying. John Cheever and James Baldwin are crying, too. I guess the reader is just to accept that this is where "the short story is today," and apparently the Editors at The New Yorker and the series editor of "Best" want you to know that they know where "the short story is today." Nonetheless, congratulations of Anthony Doerr for at least trying to balance the "best" quite well, otherwise this collection would rate 2 or 3 stars only, as many reviewers have indicated.

4 people found this helpful

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DomeniqueCY

I guess this was 2019

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 29, 2020

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It is odd to think now, halfway into 2020 how this was the best of 2019, and how none of these writers or characters saw what was coming. Maybe because it was the last year of the decade, the stories were not only trying to challenge things but were generally challenging. As if to say, in the 20-teens, good guy or bad guy, no one was particularly likable.
Short story compilations are hard to read quickly because you are thrown in and out of many worlds very quickly. This took me about a month intermittent with other books. It is also not worth reviewing each story individually, because I imagine in their original publications of their genre magazines, they made more sense. This editor did have some undercurrents and themes that seem to come up in all the stories:
1) Where the line for sexual deviances begins
2) The future (as a place and an idea)
3)The recent past ( most specifically the 1990's and the 1800's)
4) Deconstruction/things fall apart etc.

I didn't care much for any of these areas.
None of the stories are particularly avant-garde, and only one of them truly resonated with me. But I did it, I read them all. I guess this was 2019.

One person found this helpful

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SheReads

The Best of The Best

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 19, 2020

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This book doesn't need a review because it's impossible for it to be anything but spectacular given the collection of writers whose work is shown here.
I Loved Anthony Doer's intro - I've gone in an out of this book discovering writers! It's fantastic in every way! I highly recommend especially if you are a short story reader!
Some people say it's more difficult to write a short story than a novel - and I can understand how that might be true. To create a piece that resonates in only a few pages is truly a work of art and all of these writers are artists! Fantastic!

One person found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

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Gemma

A great year for this collection

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on January 9, 2020

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I buy this collection every year, and most years there are one or two stories that don’t grab me. This year was different: I liked every story in the collection.

2 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Disappointing

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on June 9, 2020

Verified Purchase

After reading 5-6 stories I wondered if these were the BEST that American authors could produce

One person found this helpful

Ahmad Alfahad

Its a book

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on January 4, 2021

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Bought for school