The Best American Short Stories 2013 - Couverture souple

BASS 2012:"A typically strong selection ... that should please readers who love the traditional pleasures of storytelling, through voices that are thoroughly contemporary." – Kirkus  BASS 2011:"Children and their parents feature prominently, if predictably, in this year's collection, which includes stories by three Pulitzer Prize-winners. Some of the stronger pieces--such as Sam Lipsyte's "The Dungeon Master," about an endearing young cast of misfit fantasy-game players, and Ricardo Nuila's "Dog Bites," in which a pedantic but loving father helps his son navigate the perils of Little League and life without Mom--tackle the difficulties of adolescence with fresh humor and vigor...Though many of the names here are familiar, this powerful new work re-establishes these authors' command of the form."--Publisher's Weekly "Another stellar selection from an anthology that has sustained high standards for 35 years..Each one of these stories could establish itself as some reader’s favorite."
--Kirkus, STARRED BASS past praise:"Russo has compiled a collection of consistently entertaining fiction that engages itself with this world (rather than conjuring its own world or reducing the world of fiction to words)... with even the few of the newsstand magazines that publish fiction publishing less of it, the stories themselves seem as vital as ever. Any reader will likely discover a new favorite writer here, or more." --Booklist, STARRED

"...the anthology's chorus of 20 stories...are by turns playful, ironic, somber and meditative...the authors generally are writers with proven track records...The anthology feels rooted in the real world...[and is], more uniformly satisfying than some "Best" outings have been..." --The Wall Street Journal  "The stories are a sort of antenna for what is going on in the world...Even topical stories are of enduring quality, and the same is true for several other stories that wrestle with contemporary religion and faith." --Chicago Tribune

“As our vision becomes more global, our storytelling is stretching in many ways. Stories increasingly change point of view, switch location, and sometimes pack as much material as a short novel might,” writes guest editor Elizabeth Strout. “It’s the variety of voices that most indicates the increasing confluence of cultures involved in making us who we are.” The Best American Short Stories 2013 presents an impressive diversity of writers who dexterously lead us into their corners of the world.

In “Miss Lora,” Junot Díaz masterfully puts us in the mind of a teenage boy who throws aside his better sense and pursues an intimate affair with a high school teacher. Sheila Kohler tackles innocence and abuse as a child wanders away from her mother, in thrall to a stranger she believes is the “Magic Man.” Kirstin Valdez Quade’s “Nemecia” depicts the after-effects of a secret, violent family trauma. Joan Wickersham’s “The Tunnel” is a tragic love story about a mother’s declining health and her daughter’s helplessness as she struggles to balance her responsibility to her mother and her own desires. New author Callan Wink’s “Breatharians” unsettles the reader as a farm boy shoulders a grim chore in the wake of his parents’ estrangement.
“Elizabeth Strout was a wonderful reader, an author who knows well that the sound of one’s writing is just as important as and indivisible from the content,” writes series editor Heidi Pitlor. “Here are twenty compellingly told, powerfully felt stories about urgent matters with profound consequences.”