The Best American Short Stories 2014 - Award-Winning Fiction Collection | Perfect for Book Clubs, Literature Lovers & Gift Giving

The Best American Short Stories series uses a different guest editor each year, so there's some significant variation from year to year in the sort of stories that are selected for the volume. This year's guest editor was Jennifer Egan, and by my tastes she did a great job, with excellent stories far outweighing the ones I found lacking.Below are my mini-reviews of all the stories in the anthology.In "Charity" by Charles Baxter, a gay man doing volunteer work in Ethiopia returns home with a debilitating illness and becomes addicted to painkillers. His former lover tracks him down and gets him back on his feet, and thus two forms of the titular "charity" are portrayed in one moving and beautifully crafted story."The Indian Uprising" by Ann Beattie is a portrait of a woman's relationship with an aged man who was once her college professor. Beattie's stories can be difficult; in just a few pages they sometimes introduce a flurry of characters, past and present events, and details of setting that might seem jumbled and structureless. And often her stories end with that "where ya goin' with all this?" question still hanging in the air, at least for readers looking for straightforward plot resolution. But I found this piece to be a wonderful example of the sort of beauty to be found in her best stories. That beauty is not in its dynamics, its motion of plot or arc of character, but simply as something that rests quietly on the page like a work of art."The Night of the Satellite" by T.C. Boyle was one of the few stories in this book that I didn't care for at all. It's little more than a detailed description of an uninteresting and rather dimwitted couple having an uninteresting and dimwitted argument. Some heavy-handed symbolism falling out of the sky at the end doesn't improve things."After the Flood" by Peter Cameron continues the theme of drab, not-too-bright characters. I didn't find this story as unequivocally pointless as T.C. Boyle's, but neither was it particularly compelling or interesting.In "Long Tom Lookout" by Nicole Cullen, a woman is unexpectedly given custody of her husband's illegitimate child -- a boy with autism-spectrum symptoms. This is a finely crafted story, but a little too relentlessly grim and humorless for my taste."Medium Tough" by Craig Davidson is a remarkable story; gritty, bizarre, and indeed -- tough. Many will find its graphic operating room gore too disturbing to be enjoyable, and I can't blame them. The story made an impact on me, but I'm ambivalent about seeking out more by this author."The Breeze" by Joshua Ferris is something of a Groundhog Day meets Waiting for Godot. A married couple are taken through several variations of the same night, most of them leading to miscommunication and quarrels. An interesting notion, but the endless repetitions of "What do you want to do?" "I don't care. What do you want to do?" discussions became rather tedious."Hover" by Nell Freudenberger is a nice, well-done story about a mother going through a divorce, with a bit of fantasy dropped in."A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me" by David Gates is a beautiful story about friendship, life and death. I found it pretty amazing that a short story could give as much of a feeling of time -- of the course of a life -- as this one does. The story is quiet but deeply moving, and one of the best in the anthology."At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners" by Lauren Groff is similar to the above story in how it manages to encompass many decades of a lifetime within a short story. I didn't find this piece quite as unified and compelling as David Gates' but still it's an impressive and beautiful piece of work."The Judge's Will" by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala is a low-key story of a middle aged Indian woman, unhappy in her marriage, dealing with the knowledge that her ailing husband has a mistress. None of the characters is likable and the story has no clear-cut resolution, but still it's artful and interesting."Evie M." by O. A. Lindsey may be the most "experimental" story in this anthology, chronicling the life of a low-level office worker with microscopic attention to the most mundane details. My first reaction was rather disdainful, but the author's comments at the back of the book gave the story a context that made it more interesting."Kattekoppen" by Will Mackin is a story taking place in the Afghan war. There's an element of unreality, or perhaps detachment-from-reality, which feels entirely appropriate to a war story. I found the mood and style of this piece reminiscent of Tim O'Brien's classic The Things They Carried, which is no small praise."This is Not a Love Song" by Brendan Mathews tells the story of a briefly successful "post-punk pop" singer of the early 90s, told from the point of view of her best friend. The story is deeply felt, convincing in its realism, and includes some of the most beautiful writing in the anthology.In "La Pulchra Nota" by Molly McNett the narrator is a 14th century music teacher, and the story feels very authentic in its portrayal of a person from that time. It also tells a dark and unhappy story with great effectiveness."God" by Benjamin Nugent is a funny and ultimately sad story of a college fraternity's playfully exaggerated regard for a particular co-ed, nicknamed "God." This may be one of the more lightweight stories in this book, but still it's a respectable work."Mastiff" by Joyce Carol Oats is an excellent example of Oats' brand of literary-fiction-meets-horror-fiction, and its artistry is undeniable. But as with much of what I've read of her work, this story is just too bloodthirsty for my taste, and the artistry wasn't enough to make it enjoyable for me."Next to Nothing" by Stephen O'Connor is an odd story, following the lives of two sisters who are portrayed as devoid of virtually all human feelings. These unrealistic and unsympathetic characters deprive the story of any impact it might have had, and I was left wondering what the point of it was."Madame Bovary's Greyhound" by Karen Russell is about exactly what the title says, and is a charming, delightful story. Russell is a wonderful writer whose sentences often blaze with absolute genius; two examples: "Under glassy bathwater, Emma's bare body as still and bright as quartz in a quarry, she let the hours fill her nostrils with the terrible serenity of a drowned woman." And: "Herons sailed over her head, their broad wings flat as palms, stroking her from scalp to tail at an immense distance--a remote benediction--and the dog's mind became empty and smooth.""Antarctica" by Laura van den Berg is a rare thing in literary fiction: an addictive page-turner that sucks you into its plot and doesn't let go. And yet at the same time it manages to be melancholy and deliberately measured in pace. This was one of my favorite stories in the book, and van den Berg is an author I'll be seeking out in the future.All in all, the best stories in this anthology more than made up for the weaker ones, and I consider this an excellent year for the series.