The Best American Short Stories 1999

Rating:
Summary: A fine collection
Review: I found this to be an excellent, thoughtfully assembled collection of stories. I must especially disagree with the reviewer who felt that having a b writer like Pam Houston in a collection with Rick Bass ammounts to a literary injustice. Quite to the contrary, Houston's story is the best in the book and bears re-reading. (And, if you've checked out John Updike's Best Short Stories of the Century, you'll note that her story was one of the few tales from the nineties to be included.) This is a slow, collection, certainly, which may turn off some readers. But I've thoroughly enjoyed it.

Rating:
Summary: Understated and dream-like
Review: I have to admit, I really really loved this book. I don't get the time to read that often, and the short stories in here are exactly the kind that I like to lose myself in. Sure, some are a little bit slow-moving, but it's not a tedious slow, it's a Zen-slow. My favorites include Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter and The Piano Tuner. A great find, highly reccomended.

Rating:
Summary: A very good collection of stories
Review: I have to disagree with the other reviewers. Okay, there are a few duds -- but there are every year. This is a very good collection, and anyone who says that it is not does not like literary fiction. This is a surprisingly well rounded story-based collection, perhaps a bit slow moving, but rich and rewarding. Nathan Englander's allegorical story "The Tumblers" is worth the price of admission alone. And then there are excellent stories by Rick Bass, Annie Proulx, Hester Kaplan, Tim Gautreaux and others.

Rating:
Summary: No Exit
Review: I suppose if you like the tone and style found typically in BEST SHORT STORIES of XXXX you'll like this. For me, I find them--and especially this one--boring. After having read it, I was left with absolutely nothing: no profound revelation, no mental challenge, no rivalry at any sort of level. A sort of hell with no exit, with each turn of the page, each turn to a new story, a sort of rolling of the rock uphill. I finally had to put it down in the middle of THE BEST GIRLFRIEND.... In these stories, people live, people search, people quest...for fulfillment of common desires or exit out of circumstances that are simply silly. And in the end, nothing new is learned, no revelation discovered, not even a glimpse of some shadow of a holy grail. Just time precious time wasted that can never be recovered. Better to spend that time sitting in the corner, watching the spiders hunt. These books enlighten you nil.

Rating:
Summary: These are the best?
Review: I'm almost half way through this book, but won't be finishing it anytime soon. A few of the stories so far have kept my interest, but the majority seem to be overly analitical, and dripping with symbolism. Reminds me of some of the stories we had to dissect in college lit classes. Ambiguous, Ambiguous, Ambiguous Short Stories should have been the title.

Rating:
Summary: Both Wheat and Chaff....
Review: It's probably not good for the anthology that the piece I most enjoyed was Amy Tan's introduction. I thought that was well worth the read. The actual stories left me wanting something more, with the exception of "The Sun, The Moon, The Stars" by Junot Diaz, "Real Estate" by Lorrie Moore, "The 5:22" by George Harrar, and an honorable mention to Heidi Julavits' "Marry the One Who Gets There First". These stories all combined great writing with great insight, all in the framework of good narrative flow. The others--and I confess to not reading several--lacked something. Annie Proulx's piece sucked me in, and had vivid, sparkling dialogue and great writing. However, it failed to deliver on story. When I came to the end, enchanted by all the previous elements, I felt cheated and angry at it's sloppy conclusion. Even Stephen Dobyn's "Kansas" left me flat, and Dobyns never fails to impress me. Overall, this is a good collection, just not a great one by any means.

Rating:
Summary: Some good
Review: Personally, I think Amy Tan is a fantastic author and I loved her introduction. However, I am probably in the minority in that I did not enjoy the Rick Bass story at all. It seemed to me that that story was attempting to shove the author's intentions of what the story was about down my throat. But hey, that's just my opinion. I loved "The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars" and "Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter", but didn't think such stories as "Kansas" should have been included. It's not such a bad collection and it's interesting to read the vast array of short stories.

Rating:
Summary: Stories start on page 78 with the exception of Rick Bass
Review: So I read the Hermit's Story as the lead off and skipped the next four stories because they just couldn't hold my interest through the first few sentences. The rest of the selections are decent reading some are up to the level of Rick Bass' piece and Annie Proulx's The Bunchgrass Edge of the World, some are not. Lorrie Moore's two pages of HA HA's nearly put me off what is really a pretty good story, although she makes it tough to buy into the second thread with the abrupt change.I thought Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies one of the best stories in this edition. Even without those lost sixty-two pages, the rest is worth the price of the tradepaper edition.

Rating:
Summary: An interesting lesson in writing styles.
Review: This book was bought as something to read while traveling. For this it is excellent and worthwhile as I have read some of the stories several times. Being a person who likes to compare different styles and authors this book was a refreshing break from the "A" class writers. The stories made you think and reflect on what is being said as much as the symbolism of the words.

Rating:
Summary: Most Boring BASS Ever
Review: This is by far the dullest collection of the usually high-caliber Best American Short Story Collection. There are so many "bad" stories here, one wonders what Ms. Tan was thinking. However, the Rick bass story and one by Nathan Englander prevent the collection from being what seems to be an almost complete Junior Varsity element to the collection....next year get a better editor, because boredom should not be a prerequisite for storytelling.