I like anthologies: their heft and their variety. For the most part, I like this anthology; among my favorite selections are E.L. Doctorow's "A House on the Plains," William Gay's "The Paperhanger," and Joyce Carol Oates' "Landfill" (which one should not read before bed, as I did, should one want to avoid nightmares of being killed in a trash compacter). A few selections puzzled me - the stories selected to represent Amy Hempel, Lydia Davis, Lorrie Moore, and Aimee Bender are not what I consider...

Fantastic collection.

There's definitely a lot of amazing writers in this anthology, and it could've been a great gateway to get more readers interested in contemporary short stories, but their choice of Joyce Carol Oates (who has very dark sensibilities) as an editor makes this collection wallow way too much in disturbing subject matter. Almost every story involves some kind of grisly murder, or rape, or even babies in dumpsters.Not that there weren't some highlights: "Some Terpsichore" by Elizabeth McCracken was on...

If every Aimee Bender story were as great as Off, I'd go live in her home.Very creepy to read Mary Gaitskill gang rape story I swear I remember reading many years ago on a plane, like in Esquire or something, then being permanently traumatized. Did not realize it was written by a woman, and certainly no idea who Gaitskill was at that time.First thing I've read by Jhumpa Lahiri and liked it. Cannot read fiction about immigrant groups with cuisine I like though, since it makes me too hungry when t...

What a monster! This anthology had plenty of amazing stories, and a few not so amazing ones (some of which I skipped). I anticipate that I will have my students read "The Toughest Indian in the World" by Sherman Alexia, "The Hermit's Story" by Rick Bass, "Off" by Aimee Bender, "Son of the Wolfman" by Michael Chabon, "Night Women" by Edwidge Danticat, "Aurora" by Junot Diaz, "Disaster Stamps of Pluto" by Louise Erdrich, "Old Boys, Old Girls" by Edward P. Jones, "Once in a Lifetime" by Jhumpa Lahi...

Finally made it through this 750-page fatty. Some wonderful stuff in here, of course. Richard Bausch's "1-900" was hilarious; Ann Beattie's "Lavande" and E.L. Doctorow's "A House on the Plains" reminded me how fantastic those two writers can be. The latter was my favorite story in the book until I hit Lorrie Moore's "Paper Losses" -- nobody does funny/sad Lorrie Moore. Annie Proulx's "People In Hell Just Want a Drink of Water" was terrific, too. Hmm. Interesting that all but one of those writers...

I agree with some of the other reviews: there's a lot of dark material in this collection. But I enjoyed many stories including "The Hermit's Story" by Rick Bass, "Mercy" by Pickney Benedict, "A House on the Plains" by E.L. Doctorow, "Cowboy" by Thomas McGuane, and "Leslie and Sam" by Douglas Unger.

I am not a Joyce Carol Oates fan, so was worried (and rightly so) about an anthology of stories that she had selected. To me, Oates is heavy handed, looks at the world from a morbid and sinister perspective, and always goes for the tawdry and degrading detail. Unfortunately, that is also true of most of the work she collected here. Besides the stories by Lorrie Moore and Antonya Nelson, which I will always happily read, the only two I really liked were Ranch Girl by Maile Meloy and Bullet in the...

pretty amazing collection but weirdly dark, does every marriage have to be awful, and every kid killed or scarred in some way? also there are at least two Mac grads included (Tim O'Brien and Charles Baxter) and lots of MN references.

An excellent short fiction collection. There are is a huge selection of varied, talented, interesting writers contained in this book. I only disliked one ("Double Exposure" by Greg Johnson) but I enjoyed all of the rest of the stories featured in this volume. Ten of them I thought were especially phenomenal, including Michael Chabon's "Son of the Wolfman", "Disaster Stamps of Pluto" by Louise Erdrich, and Elizabeth McCracken's "Some Terpsichore." I would recommend this book to anyone, whether yo...

Well, I finished it - the first story is actually probably my favorite, or at least way up there. Lots of really great ones. JCO is a subtle person. I think she's spent her life sexually repressed too! ;)

The common thread running through the reviews of this book are that it's too dark and grisly. All I can say is, perhaps that's why I enjoyed reading it so much.

As with any anthology, there are good stories and bad stories. Some reached me in a visceral way, others left me flat. But the main thing I took away from this collection is the stagnant sameness of contemporary literary fiction. As a reader, I crave fiction that is daring. Fiction the plays with form and themes. While there is some evidence of that here, I ended with the overall impression of a ton of first person narratives, a lot of pretentious, repellant, or otherwise uninteresting protagoni...

SO much fun- highly recommend. I haven't had such a good time reading in years. It was wonderful to get a fairly large sample of authors through this book- I have a tendency to stick with the same authors and genres for long periods, but after reading this I have so many "can't wait to reads" to look forward to.

My new favorite anthology for teaching beginning fiction writing. Great range.

Of the 48 stories in this collection selected by Joyce Carol Oates, 7 are fabulous (those by Bausch, Danticat, Davis, Doctorow, Erdrich, Johnson and Lahiri). Oates selected these stories because they were published in the 21st century, and because they represent the "variety" of the genre, including "abrupt and edgy" openings and traditional stories, beautifully written. She says that despite the lack of experimentation (though DFW is included here), all of the fiction is "unsettling".I would ha...

Worth reading, each successive story linked to the one before it with a theme, idea, or obscure word, and I discovered some great authors that I didn't know about. There is, however, a glut of graphic descriptions of gay sex and pregnancy, most of which made them both seem exceptionally unpleasant

Wonderfully written short stories. Lovers of contemporary American short fiction and aspiring writers will love the ones in this book. I used this book for my Creative Writing: Fiction class last year and I really enjoyed examining different authors writing styles. The stories I read for my class were great and helped me in writing some of my own work, drafting out plots, and creating characters. The stories in this book are some of the most masterful pieces of short fiction I have ever read.

I read another review that said you can tell these stories were selected by Joyce Carole Oates, and I completely agree. A good chunk of the stories are about death/murder/rape/other depressing/disturbing things like that, and that really strikes me as JCO's style. There is some pretty good stuff in here...but then there's other stories that I wondered why they were chosen. Those I particularly liked were "Lavande," "Off," "A House on the Plains," "To Those of You Who Missed Your Connecting Fligh...

The curatorial touch of Ms. Oates leans heavily on the darker side of things. Some disturbing stories in this collection, but a great range of American lit. Nice primer for those looking to delve deeper into short stories.