Rating: 
Summary: Welcome to the world of fantasies - It is fiction!
Review: Fiction writing is indeed an art. If there is an absolute freedom in any form of writing, its definitely in fiction writing. The point where your own situations could be made, your own characters could be created and where emotions, humour, pain, happiness and much more becomes one... it is fiction. One can write a novel as well as a short story... this book covers many short stories from various writers. Since it has multiple short stories one can never get bored because if not one, the other definitely interests the reader. Since this book serves such diversity and quality in short stories it can soon become 'the bible' or a writer. One can use this book over and over again to see how various writers express the same situation in different ways and how small things like dialouge and setting can make huge difference to a fiction. This book is an interesting cruise... one that could well be called 'a roller-coaster ride' of fiction writing!
Rating: 
Summary: not the best the year had to offer
Review: i don't know that i would call these the best the year had to offer. there are a few that are bad, most are good, and a few that definitely were the best of 2000 (Marisa Silver, Ha Jin, Peter Orner, Roy Parvin). you can argue over whether or not this is the best of the year or not, but you can't argue that it is a good collection of fiction.
Rating: 
Summary: Awesome Collection
Review: I have always loved the Best-American series. I think they're all excellent ways of tasting some of the best writing that comes out of America each year. Short stories have long been a favourite of mine and I find every year the Best American Short Stories are a joy to read. Not only are short stories perfect for modern American society where one rarely has time to sit down and finish a novel in a decent enough amount of time to remember the beginning when one reaches the end (as guest editor Kingsolver points out in her introduction), but these are the creme de la creme. Kingsolver did a wonderful job at picking them. I enjoyed every single one of them, some more than others of course, and I always come away with a list of books to check out (each author represented in the collection has a short bio and listing of works in the back of the book)... I definitely recommend this and the other Best American Short Stories books to everyone.
Rating:
Summary: Nice collection of short stories
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed this collection. You can quibble
about which authors or stories were omitted, but I
found it be a very valuable resource in terms of single
sourcing an excellent variety of work. When I was
a "budding" writer, short stories were my main source
of inspirational reading. I learned a lot about point of
view, plot development and character analysis from
some of the masters of the craft. I also became acquainted
with scores of new writers seeking to make an impact in the
litery world. I would highly recommend this collection
of short stories
Rating: 
Summary: Practice what you preach, Katrina
Review: I'm always on the look-out for a good short story - either for my own enjoyment or to use in my reading classes, or to recommend to a friend. So, every year, I buy "The Best American Short Stories." My anticipation grew as I read this year's introduction, "brevity is the soul of everything" Barbara Kingsolver adamantly insisted. Great! I thought. Some short short stories with punch. Humph! Kingsolver then proceeded to select a 43 page novella as her first choice. And it was down hill from there on in. Oh well, there's always next year!
Rating:
Summary: Practice what you preach, Katrina
Review: I'm always on the look-out for a good short story - either for my own enjoyment or to use in my reading classes, or to recommend to a friend. So, every year, I buy "The Best American Short Stories." My anticipation grew as I read this year's introduction, "brevity is the soul of everything" Barbara Kingsolver adamantly insisted. Great! I thought. Some short short stories with punch. Humph! Kingsolver then proceeded to select a 43 page novella as her first choice. And it was down hill from there on in. Oh well, there's always next year!
Rating:
Summary: An enlightening journey through contemporary fiction
Review: I'm not a connoisseur of contemporary fiction, but when I saw that Barbara Kingsolver edited this year's edition of Best American Short Stories, I was eager to read the work of those writers whom one of my favorite writers most admires. I was not disappointed. Kingsolver has compiled a diverse selection of short stories that vary in depth and texture. Some, like Peter Ho Davies' "Think of England," with its collection of vivid characters and straightforward narrative, are easily digested. Others, like Nancy Reisman's "Illumination," will challenge even the most intelligent reader to find the "large truths delivered in tight spaces" to which Kingsolver refers in her introduction. (This, despite the book's most memorable opening line: "Lucia Mazzano is a loaf of bread." It immediately reminded me of the improvised line, "You're part eggplant," in True Romance with Christopher Walken and Dennis Hopper.) Highly recommended, especially for those wishing to explore contemporary fiction.
Rating:
Summary: Maybe not THE BEST, but I'm not complaining...
Review: In fairness, I should start this review by pointing out that, if I were to be called upon to pick the 20 best short stories in any year, I would be hard pressed to do so. This is not because I would have difficulty choosing amongst all the wonderful works; it would be because I would have trouble finding even 20 stories I thought deserved that kind of acclaim. I don't know if Barbara Kingsolver found herself in the same situation. If so, she certainly avoided saying so in her preface. However, I found only about four or five of these stories to be real standouts, and in each of these cases, the author broke out of the formula which most of the other stories seemed to follow. Among the standouts were Rick Bass's "The Fireman," in which he tells about a man whose relationship with his wife depends on his being called out to fight dangerous fires several nights a week; Ha Jin's, "When Cowboy Chicken Came to Town," about an American fast food restaurant in China; and my absolute favorite, "The Apple Tree," by Trevanian. This last broke all the rules of modern short story writing, and returned to a more poetic style, and a summation at the end. I found some of the stories by the older, well-known writers particularly disappointing. I won't name names to avoid insulting someone's favorite. However one much acclaimed female writer used such a confusion of pronouns at the beginning of her story, that I had to read over it several times to figure out who was who. Indeed, had the author's name not been at the top of the page, any high school English teacher would have had a field day with a red pen. All in all, I'd say the book is worth the price. Even for only four good short stories, you'd have to pay a lot more to purchase the literarty journals that originally published them. Also, if you are trying to break into the writing field yourself, you need to read this to find out what is currently cnsidered the best. However, I warn you, in the latter case, you are liable to get extremely frustrated.
Rating:
Summary: There are a few stories here that make it worthwhile
Review: In fairness, I should start this review by pointing out that, if I were to be called upon to pick the 20 best short stories in any year, I would be hard pressed to do so. This is not because I would have difficulty choosing amongst all the wonderful works; it would be because I would have trouble finding even 20 stories I thought deserved that kind of acclaim. I don't know if Barbara Kingsolver found herself in the same situation. If so, she certainly avoided saying so in her preface. However, I found only about four or five of these stories to be real standouts, and in each of these cases, the author broke out of the formula which most of the other stories seemed to follow. Among the standouts were Rick Bass's "The Fireman," in which he tells about a man whose relationship with his wife depends on his being called out to fight dangerous fires several nights a week; Ha Jin's, "When Cowboy Chicken Came to Town," about an American fast food restaurant in China; and my absolute favorite, "The Apple Tree," by Trevanian. This last broke all the rules of modern short story writing, and returned to a more poetic style, and a summation at the end. I found some of the stories by the older, well-known writers particularly disappointing. I won't name names to avoid insulting someone's favorite. However one much acclaimed female writer used such a confusion of pronouns at the beginning of her story, that I had to read over it several times to figure out who was who. Indeed, had the author's name not been at the top of the page, any high school English teacher would have had a field day with a red pen. All in all, I'd say the book is worth the price. Even for only four good short stories, you'd have to pay a lot more to purchase the literarty journals that originally published them. Also, if you are trying to break into the writing field yourself, you need to read this to find out what is currently cnsidered the best. However, I warn you, in the latter case, you are liable to get extremely frustrated.
Rating:
Summary: A TREASURE!
Review: In her introduction to this estimable collection of short fiction, Barbara Kingsolver thanks the authors for "pieces of truth that moved me to a new understanding of the world." I add my gratitude for 20 memorable stories, diverse in concept but united by excellence. Arranged alphabetically by author, these tales are spare, one only four pages. All are vivified by rich narrative voices. The opening story, "Servants Of The Map" by Andrea Barrett introduces a young 19th century surveyor struggling through the Himalayas. Ridiculed by other members of his party, he carries a small wooden trunk holding letters from his wife. Powerful descriptions of the incapacitating cold bring chills, as does the gradual revelation that the surveyor is losing rational thought. Montana author Rick Bass imagines Kirby, a volunteer fireman so caught up in fighting fire that all else is tedium. His marriage suffers, yet it is fire that saves this relationship. The couple's ennui, their disagreements pale beside the dangers he faces when there is a blaze. "As long as the city keeps burning," Kirby thinks, "they can avoid becoming weary and numb. Always, he leaves, is drawn away, and then returns, to a second chance." It is Wales and D-Day once again in "Think Of England" by Peter Ho Davies. Sixteen-year-old Sarah works in a pub frequented by English soldiers who may use her. Another unlucky in love is "Pinky," the corpulent hero in Claire Davis's "Labors Of The Heart." For the first time in his forty plus years he falls in love. Can his affections ever be returned when he is categorized as "morbidly obese," and knows that "every movement, whether tying a shoe or climbing a short flight of stairs, becomes a labor of the heart?" Texas writer Annette Sanford offers "Nobody Listens When I Talk," an engaging mini-portrait of a young girl who spends a summer growing up. The maturation of two brothers is lined in "Boys," a poignant cameo of family life by Rick Moody. Bushels of laughter spark Trevanian's Basque-set story "The Apple Tree." Two village women, lifelong rivals, are next-door neighbors. While their original bone of contention had been which of them the village Romeo favored, (in truth, neither) they now square off for the fruit of an apple tree that sits on their boundary line. When harvesting apples the women come face to face. Each picks faster and faster until one pulls a limb over to gather more fruit. When she releases the branch it hits the other woman, toppling her into a bed of leeks. Mud begins to fly.
Not only mud but verbal assaults as well: They were "Crying out every vilification that years of rivalry had stored up in their fertile imaginations, decorating one another's reputations with those biologically explicit calumnies for which the Basque language might have been specifically designed, were it not universally known that it was invented in heaven for use by the angels." The Best American Short Stories 2001 is a treasure. Each story is a gem, but isn't that what treasures hold? - Gail Cooke
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