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The Best Reviewed Short Story Collections of 2021

Featuring haruki murakami, brandon taylor, elizabeth mccracken, kevin barry, lily king, and more.

Well, friends, another grim and grueling plague year is drawing to a close, and that can mean only one thing: it’s time to put on our Book Marks stats hats and tabulate the best reviewed books of the past twelve months.

Yes, using reviews drawn from more than 150 publications, over the next two weeks we’ll be revealing the most critically-acclaimed books of 2021, in the categories of (deep breath): Memoir and Biography ; Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror ; Short Story Collections; Essay Collections; Poetry; Mystery and Crime; Graphic Literature; Literature in Translation; General Fiction; and General Nonfiction.

Today’s installment: Short Story Collections .

Brought to you by Book Marks , Lit Hub’s “Rotten Tomatoes for books.”

1. Afterparties by Anthony Veasna So (Ecco)

22 Rave • 5 Positive • 1 Mixed

“The presence of the author is so vivid in Afterparties , Anthony Veasna So’s collection of stories, he seems to be at your elbow as you read … The personality that animates Afterparties is unmistakably youthful, and the stories themselves are mainly built around conditions of youth—vexed and tender relationships with parents, awkward romances, nebulous worries about the future. But from his vantage on the evanescent bridge to maturity, So is puzzling out some big questions, ones that might be exigent from different vantages at any age. The stories are great fun to read—brimming over with life and energy and comic insight and deep feeling.”

–Deborah Eisenberg ( New York Review of Books )

2. Filthy Animals by Brandon Taylor (Riverhead)

19 Rave • 7 Positive • 2 Mixed Read an interview with Brandon Taylor here

“Taylor plays the Lionel-Charles-Sophie storyline for all its awkwardness and resentment, but it can feel like a note held too long to suspend commitment, which is the resolution we’re trained to expect … The violence is neither glamorous nor gratuitous; it is senseless without being pointless. In contrast, Taylor presents such earnest moments of vulnerability in Anne of Cleves that my breath hitched … Some writers have the gift of perfect pitch when writing dialogue; Taylor’s gift is perfect tempo. In a band of writers, he’d be the drummer who sticks to a steady moderato. He neither rushes a story to its high notes nor drags the pace so that we can admire his voice. And as a plotter, he doesn’t rely on gasp-inducing reveals … Taylor’s superpower is compressing a lifetime of backstory into a paragraph – sometimes just a sentence … I’ve come to expect, in fiction, the story of the Sad Gay Youth who is rejected by his often religious family and thereafter becomes self-destructive or reckless. And while Taylor refracts versions of this story throughout the collection, he does so without overly romanticising it … He is a writer of enormous subtlety and of composure beyond his years.”

–Ian Williams ( The Guardian )

3. First Person Singular by Haruki Murakami (Knopf)

13 Rave • 17 Positive • 7 Mixed • 5 Pan

“… a blazing and brilliant return to form … a taut and tight, suspenseful and spellbinding, witty and wonderful group of eight stories … there isn’t a weak one in the bunch. The stories echo with Murakami’s preoccupations. Nostalgia and longing for the charged, evocative moments of young adulthood. Memory’s power and fragility; how identity forms from random decisions, ‘minor incidents,’ and chance encounters; the at once intransigent and fragile nature of the ‘self.’ Guilt, shame, and regret for mistakes made and people damaged by foolish or heartless choices. The power and potency of young love and the residual weight of fleeting erotic entanglements. Music’s power to make indelible impressions, elicit buried memories, connect otherwise very different people, and capture what words cannot. The themes become a kind of meter against which all the stories make their particular, chiming rhythms … The reading experience is unsettled by a pervasive blurring of the lines between fantasy and reality, dream and waking … Most of the narrators foreground the act of telling and ruminate on the intention behind and effects of disclosing secrets, putting inchoate impulses, fears, or yearnings into clear, logical prose … This mesmerizing collection would make a superb introduction to Murakami for anyone who hasn’t yet fallen under his spell; his legion of devoted fans will gobble it up and beg for more.”

–Pricilla Gilman ( The Boston Globe )

4. That Old Country Music by Kevin Barry (Doubleday)

13 Rave • 10 Positive •1 Mixed

“There’s not a bad story in the bunch, and it’s as accomplished a book as Barry has ever written … Barry does an excellent job probing the psyche of his diffident protagonist, and ends the story with an unexpected moment of sweetness that’s anything but cloying—realism doesn’t need to be miserablism, he seems to hint; sometimes things actually do work out … Barry has a rare gift for crafting characters the reader cares about despite their flaws; in just 13 pages, he manages to make Hannah and Setanta come to life through sharp dialogue and keen observations … Barry proves to be a master of writing about both love and cruelty … Barry brilliantly evokes both the good and bad sides of love, and does so with stunningly gorgeous writing … There’s not an aspect of writing that Barry doesn’t excel at. His dialogue rings true, and he’s amazingly gifted at scene-setting—he evokes both the landscape of western Ireland and the landscape of the human heart beautifully. His greatest accomplishment, perhaps, is his understanding of the ways our collective psyche works; he seems to have an innate sense of why people behave the way we do, and exactly what we’re capable of, both good and bad.”

–Michael Schaub ( NPR )

5. Milk Blood Heat by Dantiel W. Moniz (Grove)

17 Rave • 1 Positive Listen to an interview with Dantiel W. Moniz here

“Mortality is the undercurrent in Dantiel W. Moniz’s electrifying debut story collection, Milk Blood Heat , but where there’s death there is the whir of life, too. A lot of collections consist of some duds, yet every single page in this book is a shimmering seashell that contains the sound of multiple oceans. Reading one of Moniz’s stories is like holding your breath underwater while letting the salt sting your fresh wounds. It’s exhilarating and shocking and even healing. The power in these stories rests in their veracity, vitality and vulnerability.”

–Michelle Filgate ( The Washington Post )

6. The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enriquez (Hogarth)

15 Rave 2 Positive Read a story from The Dangers of Smoking in Bed here

“There’s something thrilling about other people’s suffering—at least within this collection’s 12 stories of death, sex and the occult. Horrors are relayed in a stylish deadpan … Enriquez’s plots deteriorate with satisfying celerity … Largely it’s insatiable women, raggedy slum dwellers and dead children—those who are ordinarily powerless—who wield unholy power in this collection, and they seem uninterested in being reasonable. And Enriquez is particularly adept at capturing the single-minded intensity of teenage girls … If some of these stories end vaguely, the best ones close on the verge of some transgressive climax … To Enriquez, there’s pleasure in the perverse.”

–Chelsea Leu ( The New York Times Book Review )

7. The Souvenir Museum by Elizabeth McCracken (Ecco)

13 Rave • 2 Positive • 1 Mixed Read Elizabeth McCracken on savoring the mystery of stories here

“Elizabeth McCracken’s The Souvenir Museum begins with one of the funniest short stories I’ve read in a long time … I had to stop reading ‘The Irish Wedding’ several times to explain to my husband why I was laughing so hard. I kept thinking: I wish I were reading a whole book about these people … they’re all beguiling … This tale, like much of McCracken’s work, captures the mixed bag that characterizes most people’s lives … McCracken’s writing is never dull. She ends this fantastic collection with a second English wedding and its aftermath, nearly 20 years after the first, delivering happiness tempered by sobering circumstances—and a satisfying symmetry.”

–Heller McAlpin ( NPR )

8. Wild Swims by Dorthe Nors (Graywolf)

13 Rave • 1 Positive Read an excerpt from Wild Swims here

“How slippery the work of the Danish writer Dorthe Nors is, how it sideswipes and gleams … The stories are vivid the way a flash of immobilizing pain is vivid … Perhaps because they’re so very short and because they mostly sketch slight interior shifts in her characters, Nors’s stories all feel a little bashful, a little tender. Surely this is intentional … Most of her stories are too short to linger deeply in time or consciousness; the characters spin back into their silence almost as soon as they emerge on the page. Nors is a master at portraying female rage, but here there is also no violent explosion outward, instead a sort of inner collapse; her characters assiduously resist confronting their fury until it rises up against them and attacks their bodies … The sense of simultaneous, furious upwelling into text and retraction into shame or reticence gives the stories a powerful undercurrent, as if they were constantly wrestling with themselves. Inherently self-contradicting, they wobble interestingly on their axes, pulled between outraged individualism and the restrictive Janteloven.”

–Lauren Groff ( The New York Review of Books )

9. Walking on Cowrie Shells by Nana Nkweti (Graywolf)

12 Rave • 1 Mixed Read an interview with Nana Nkweti here

“The pure energy of the words strikes first, the thrumming, soaring, frenetic pace of Nana Nkweti’s expression … None of these stories end with a miraculous healing. Even where revelations occur, they never erase scars. Nkweti uses genre tropes to subvert our expectations. She employs the zombie story, the fairy tale, and the confessional in order to invert conventions … The levity of Nkweti’s writing can make even passing descriptions a delight … Occasionally the writing veers into the overwrought … But the sheer speed of Nkweti’s expression allows for correction in midair, and her keen descriptive eye provides more pleasures than missteps … Her inventiveness dazzles.”

–Lee Thomas ( Los Angeles Review of Books )

10. My Monticello by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson (Henry Holt)

9 Rave • 4 Positive 1 Mixed Read Jocelyn Nicole Johnson on how writing “vengeful fiction” can make you a better person, here

“Jocelyn Nicole Johnson uses history to spectacular effect in her debut fiction collection … What makes My Monticello particularly resonant is that it does not stray far from life as we know it today. In the near future conjured by Johnson, there are the heat waves and wildfires that bring climate change into view. There is fallout from a fraught election. There is the vile replacement theory rhetoric of the right wing. But the lives of Johnson’s richly drawn characters—their personal stories—are always in focus. And, because of it, the storytelling is propulsive, as we follow these refugees along a harrowing journey, with danger ever at their heels. My Monticello is, quite simply, an extraordinary debut from a gifted writer with an unflinching view of history and what may come of it.”

–Anissa Gray ( The Washington Post )

Our System:

RAVE = 5 points • POSITIVE = 3 points • MIXED = 1 point • PAN = -5 points

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Book Review

Madcap Dogs

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Dogs are the catalysts for human tenderness and daring in the warm short story collection "Madcap Dogs". In Ron Chandler’s endearing short story collection "Madcap Dogs", canines bring the best out of their human companions. In these... Read More

Penny Bloods

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• #translations

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Sex Romp Gone Wrong

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The Guardian Review short story collection

A lice Munro, mistress of the short form, describes a story as "a world seen in a quick glancing light". From caves in Pakistan to the underground tunnels of London's Piccadilly line, each of the stories collected here takes the reader into a very different world. And just as they roam across the globe, so they travel in time, from postwar London to contemporary Lagos. From a historical vignette about a 19th-century German artist, to a fable in which a book comes to life in a Chicago library, these stories explore the boundaries of imagined realities.

Our narrators include dogs and children. Love affairs begin and end, friendships splinter and rekindle, mothers and children learn to let each other go. Whether it is the recent revolutionary uprisings in Egypt and Libya or one woman's lone battle with her electricity company on the south coast of England, they deal with battles big and small. Everyday triumphs and tragedies are briefly illuminated, the secret places of relationships laid bare. Melancholy or mischievous, elegant or experimental – together these tales showcase the variety and vibrancy of the modern short story.

The dwindling media outlets for new short fiction is frequently lamented, so we are especially proud to be able to offer a whole book of previously unpublished stories by some of the best writers working today. It is a great honour to begin the collection with a specially commissioned story by William Trevor, often cited as the world's greatest living short-story writer. He joins many celebrated names to mark the culmination of the Guardian's Book Season.

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How to write a book review in 3 steps.

If the idea of reading for free — or even getting paid to read — sounds like a dream come true, remember that it isn’t a pipe dream. There are many places aspiring book reviewers can read books for free, such as Reedsy Discovery — a new platform for reviewing indie books. Of course, if you’re giving serious thought to becoming a book reviewer, your first step should be learning how to write a book review. To that end, this post covers all the basics of literary criticism. Let’s get started!

The three main steps of writing a book review are simple:

• Provide a summary: What is story about? Who are the main characters and what is the main conflict? 
• Present your evaluation: What did you think of the book? What elements worked well, and which ones didn’t? 
• Give your recommendation: Would you recommend this book to others? If so, what kinds of readers will enjoy it?

You can also download our free book review templates and use it as a guide! Otherwise, let’s take a closer look at each element.

Pro-tip : But wait! How are you sure if you should become a book reviewer in the first place? If you're on the fence, or curious about your match with a book reviewing career, take our quick quiz:

Should you become a book reviewer?

Find out the answer. Takes 30 seconds!

How to write a review of a book

Step 1. provide a summary.

Have you ever watched a movie only to realize that all the good bits were already in the trailer? Well, you don’t want the review to do that. What you do want the summary to do is reveal the genre, theme, main conflict, and main characters in the story — without giving away spoilers or revealing how the story ends.

A good rule of thumb is not to mention anything that happens beyond the midpoint. Set the stage and give readers a sense of the book without explaining how the central issue is resolved.

Emily W. Thompson's review of The Crossing :

In [Michael] Doane’s debut novel, a young man embarks on a journey of self-discovery with surprising results.

An unnamed protagonist (The Narrator) is dealing with heartbreak. His love, determined to see the world, sets out for Portland, Oregon. But he’s a small-town boy who hasn’t traveled much. So, the Narrator mourns her loss and hides from life, throwing himself into rehabbing an old motorcycle. Until one day, he takes a leap; he packs his bike and a few belongings and heads out to find the Girl. Read more...

Here are a few more reviews with well-written summaries for you to check out. The summary tend to be the longest part of the book review, so we won’t turn this post into a novel itself by pasting them all here: Le Cirque Navire reviewed by Anna Brill, The Heart of Stone reviewed by Kevin R. Dickinson, Fitting Out: The Friendship Experiment reviewed by Lianna Albrizio.

Non-fiction summary tip: The primary goal of a non-fiction summary is to provide context: what problems or issues has the book spotted, and how does it go about addressing them? Be sure to mention the authors of the title and what experience or expertise they bring to the title. Check Stefan Kløvning’s review of Creativity Cycling for an example of a summary that establishes the framework of the book within the context of its field.

Step 2. Present your evaluation

While you should absolutely weave your own personal take of a book into the review, your evaluation shouldn’t only be based on your subjective opinion. Along with presenting how you reacted to the story and how it affected you, you should also try to objectively critique the stronger and weaker elements of the story, and provide examples from the text to back up your points.

To help you write your evaluation, you should record your reactions and thoughts as you work your way through a novel you’re planning on reviewing. Here are some aspects of the book to keep in mind as you do.

Your evaluation might focus heartily on the book’s prose:

Donald Barker's review of Mercenary : 

Such are the bones of the story. But, of course, it is the manner in which Mr Gaughran puts the bones back together and fills them with life that makes “Mercenary” such a great read. The author’s style seems plain; it seems straightforward and even simple. But an attempt at imitation or emulation quickly proves that simple it is not. He employs short, punchy sentences that generate excellent dialogue dripping with irony, deadpan humour and wit. This, mixed with good descriptive prose, draws the characters – and what characters they are – along with the tumultuous events in which they participated amidst the stinking, steaming heat of the South American jungle, out from the past to the present; alive, scheming, drinking, womanising and fighting, onto the written page.

You can give readers a sense of the book by drawing comparisons to other well-known titles or authors:

Laura Hartman's review of The Mystery of Ruby's Mistletoe :

Reading Ms. Donovan’s book is reminiscent to one of my favorite authors, Dame Agatha Christie. Setting up the suspects in a snowbound house, asking them to meet in the drawing room and the cleverly satisfying conclusion was extremely gratifying. I can picture Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot nodding at Ms. Donovan saying “Well done!”

Not everyone’s tastes are the same, and you can always acknowledge this by calling out specific story elements in your evaluation: 

Kevin R. Dickinson's review of The Heart of Stone :

Whether you enjoy Galley’s worldbuilding will depend heavily on preference. Galley delivers information piecemeal, letting the characters, not the author, navigate the reader through Hartlund. A notable example is the magic system, an enigmatic force that lacks the ridge structures of, say, a Brandon Sanderson novel. While the world’s magical workings are explained, you only learn what the characters know and many mysteries remain by the end. Similar choices throughout make the world feel expansive and authentic.

Non-fiction evaluation tip: A book’s topic is only as compelling as its supporting arguments. Your evaluation of a nonfiction book should address that: how clearly and effectively are the points communicated? Turn back to Stefan’s critique for an example of a non-fiction critique that covers key takeaways and readability, without giving away any “big reveals.”

Step 3. Give your recommendation 

At the end of the day, your critique needs to answer this question: is this a book you would (or wouldn’t) recommend to other readers? You might wrap up by comparing it to other books in the same genre, or authors with similar styles, such as: “Fans of so-and-so will enjoy this book.” 

Let’s take a look at a few more tips:

You don’t need to write, “I recommend this book” — you can make it clear by highlighting your favorable opinion:

Following in the footsteps of Jack Kerouac and William Least Heat-Moon, Doane offers a coming of age story about a man finding himself on the backroads of America. Doane’s a gifted writer with fluid prose and insightful observations, using The Narrator’s personal interactions to illuminate the diversity of the United States.

Despite his flaws, it’s a pleasure to accompany The Narrator on his physical and emotional journey. The unexpected ending is a fitting denouement to an epic and memorable road trip.

Add more punch to your rating by mentioning what kind of audience will or won’t enjoy the book:

Charleigh Aleyna Reid's review of The King of FU :

I would recommend this book to anyone who grew up in the 90’s and would like to reminisce about the time, someone who is interested to see what it was like to be a 90’s kid, or perhaps anyone who is looking for a unique, funny story about someone’s life.

Unless you found the title absolutely abhorrent, a good way to balance out a less favorable book review it to share what you did like about the book — before ultimately stating why you wouldn’t recommend the novel:

Nicola O's review of Secrets of the Sea Lord :

Overall, there are plenty of enjoyable elements in this story and fans of Atlantis and mer mythology should give it a try. Despite this, it does not rise above a three-star rating, and while I had some difficulty pinning down why this is, I concluded that it comes from a surprisingly unsophisticated vocabulary. There are a couple of graphic sex scenes, which is absolutely fine in a paranormal romance, but if they were removed, I could easily imagine this as an appealing story for middle-schoolers.

Non-fiction recommendation tip: As with fiction book reviews, share why you did or didn’t enjoy the title. However, in one of the starkest divergences from fiction book reviews it’s more important than ever that you mention your expectations coming into the non-fiction book. For instance, if you’re a cow farmer who’s reading a book on the benefits of becoming a vegetarian, you’re coming in with a large and inherent bias that the book will struggle to alter. So your recommendation should cover your thoughts about the book, while clearly taking account your perspective before you started reading. Let’s look once more at Stefan’s review for an example of a rating that includes an explanation of the reviewer’s own bias.

Bonus tips for writing a book review

Let’s wrap up with a few final tips for writing a compelling review.

• Remember, this isn’t a book report. If someone wants the summary of a book, they can read the synopsis. People turn to book reviews for a fellow reader’s take on the book. And for that reason...
• Have an opinion. Even if your opinion is totally middle-of-the-line — you didn’t hate the book but you didn’t love it either — state that clearly, and explain why.
• Make your stance clear from the outset. Don’t save your opinion just for the evaluation/recommendation. Weave your thoughts about the book into your summary as well, so that readers have an idea of your opinion from the outset.
• Back up your points. Instead of just saying, “the prose was evocative” — show readers by providing an actual passage that displays this. Same goes for negative points — don’t simply tell readers you found a character unbelievable, reference a certain (non-spoiler) scene that backs this up.
• Provide the details. Don’t forget to weave the book’s information into the review: is this a debut author? Is this one installment of a series? What types of books has the author written before? What is their background? How many pages does the book have? Who published the book? What is the book’s price?
• Follow guidelines. Is the review you’re writing for Goodreads? For The New York Times ? The content and tone of your review will vary a good deal from publication to publication.
• Learn from others. One of the best ways to learn how to write a great review is to read other reviews! To help you out with that, we’ve published a post all about book review examples .

Writing book reviews can be a rewarding experience! As a book-lover yourself, it’s a great opportunity to help guide readers to their next favorite title. If you’re just getting started as a reviewer and could use a couple more tips and nudges in the right direction, check out our comprehensive blog post on how to become a book reviewer . And if you want to find out which review community is the right fit for you, we recommend taking this quick quiz:

Which review community should you join?

Find out which review community is best for your style. Takes 30 seconds!

Finally, if you feel you've nailed the basics of how to write a book review, we recommend you check out Reedsy Discovery , where you can review books for free and are guaranteed people will read them. To register as a book reviewer, simply go here !

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Book Review: Short story anthology ‘The Black Girl Survives in This One’ challenges the horror canon

This cover image released by Flatiron shows “The Black Girl Survives in This One” horror stories edited by Desiree S. Evans and Saraciea J. Fennell. (Flatiron via AP)

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Ahh, the Final Girl — a point of pride, a point of contention. Too often, the white, virginal, Western ideal. But not this time.

“The Black Girl Survives in This One,” a short story anthology edited by Saraciea J. Fennell and Desiree S. Evans, is changing the literary horror canon. As self-proclaimed fans of “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” and “Goosebumps,” the editors have upped the ante with a new collection spotlighting Black women and girls, defying the old tropes that would box Black people in as support characters or victims.

The 15 stories are introduced with an excellent forward by Tananarive Due laying out the groundwork with a brief history of Black women in horror films and literature, and of her own experiences. She argues with an infallible persuasiveness that survival is the thread that connects Black women and the genre that has largely shunned them for so long.

These are the kind of stories that stick with you long after you’ve read them.

“Queeniums for Greenium!” by Brittney Morris features a cult-ish smoothie MLM with a deadly level of blind faith that had my heart pounding and my eyes watering with laughter at intervals. And “The Skittering Thing” by Monica Brashears captures the sheer panic of being hunted in the dark, with some quirky twists.

Many of the stories are set in the most terrifying real-life place there is: high school. As such, there are teen crushes and romance aplenty, as well as timely slang that’s probably already outdated.

Honestly, this was one of the best parts: seeing 15 different authors’ takes on a late-teens Black girl. How does she wear her hair, who are her friends, is she religious, where does she live, does she like boys or girls or no one at all? Is she a bratty teen or a goody-two-shoes or a bookworm or just doing her best to get through it? Each protagonist is totally unique and the overall cast of both characters and writers diverse.

And even though we know the Black girl survives, the end is still a shock, because the real question is how.

The anthology has something for everyone, from a classic zombie horror in “Cemetery Dance Party” by Saraciea J. Fennell to a spooky twist on Afrofuturism in “Welcome Back to The Cosmos” by Kortney Nash. Two of the stories have major “Get Out” vibes that fans of Jordan Peele will appreciate (“Black Girl Nature Group” by Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite and “Foxhunt” by Charlotte Nicole Davies). If your flavor is throwbacks and cryptids, Justina Ireland’s “Black Pride” has you covered. Or if you like slow-burn psychological thrillers and smart protagonists, “TMI” by Zakiya Delila Harris.

Overall, it’s a bit long and the anthology could stand to drop a couple of the weaker stories. But it’s well worth adding to any scary book collection, and horror fans are sure to find some new favorites.

AP book reviews: https://apnews.com/hub/book-reviews

How to Write a Review of a Story That Will Impress Readers

Story review definition.

A short story review is not merely a summary – it is also a good opportunity to show critical discussion of the short story. French writer Victor Hugo received the shortest review of his work: his request to the publishing house with the text of one question mark was answered no less laconically – with one exclamation mark.

When you like everything in the story, no extra words are required. When there are controversial points in it or new and frightening things, you need something more than an exclamation mark. We are talking about reviews, ladies and gentlemen! The review of the short story is a critical analysis and evaluation of a work written in the scientific, artistic, or journalistic style to form an opinion about it for the target audience. Do you know how to write a short story review, and what is the purpose?

The Purpose of the Short Story Review

You can parse the short story to:

• better learn what you read;
• publish a blog review and attract additional traffic;
• show expertise → attract the attention of publishers → start reviewing on a commercial basis.

When we write a review, we form the final opinion about the book and create a primary view for other people. And are we doing it right?

How to Prepare for Writing a Short Story Review

First of all you need to read a story! It seems to be obvious, but no! People manage after a once-over of the content, reading the summary, and write “reviews,” where there is nothing but a binary “good-bad.” It is necessary to read the story several times – first from the standpoint of an ordinary reader, and then with a view to making a critical analysis. In the process, you can have a pad, paper bookmarks, or stickers.

Are you ready to begin reviewing? Wait a bit and check yourself:

• Do not read other reviews about the story, so as not to write other people’s words.
• Yes, your opinion may differ drastically from the majority opinion. Write, do not be afraid – a competent review will only be a plus.
• Remember the rule: the more negative opinions you have about the story, the more arguments you need to give in its favor. The review in this case will be more extensive.
• Use in equal proportions logic and emotions.

Questions to Ask Before Writing a Short Story Review

• What is the title of the book, the author, the year of publication, and the publishing house?
• What feelings did you have after reading though the story?
• How does the title of the story depict what is going on in it?
• What is the structure of the story?
• What are advantages and disadvantages of the story?
• What is the relevance of the story?

After you find out the answers to these question, it is time to learn how to write a review for a short story.

Short Story Review Writing Steps

Evaluate  the form. It is good because:

• it does not require reading a story;
• it is fairly quickly compiled;
• it is more objective than a content review.

It is bad because:

• the time must pass to evaluate by some criteria;
• all the same it is not devoid of subjectivity.

Consider orientation of the text. There are two types of orientation – book or landscape.

Review the design and cover of the book where the story is presented.

Look at the font size. Some people are lucky – they have perfect eyesight, and can read even on a matchbox. However, there are people who need large letters in the text.

Evaluate illustrations. Remember how you flipped pages in your childhood hoping to see pictures? And there was only text! In non-fiction books, the reader also wants to discover a visual component, but if to talk about short stories, probably, you will not have anything to analyze here.

Evaluate the content. To give a worthy critical review, the reviewer should have at least the same level of material as the author, and better – a higher level. You can choose one of the following strategies: a review from the side, an analysis without positing positive or negative evaluations, a critical analysis, or open polemics with the author.

Indicate the author and the title of the work in bibliographic data. Note whether this is a novelty or a reprint.

Don’tl retell the story. You can disassemble the title, content, method of building the story, and the author’s style and skill, but do it competently and intriguingly.

Express your impression of the story , while justifying all negative and positive points.

Mark the relevance of the work and the degree of its entry into the target audience.

Point out the stylistic, factual, and grammatical mistakes made by the author. Recheck their availability.

Watch your own style : do not use jargon, speechless statements, or clericalism.

Make sentences laconic and simple depending on the volume of the review.

Short Story Review Sample Analysis

You can check out the analysis of one of our short story review examples where no mistakes are allowed. We have tried to share the experience of our writers who know not only how to write reviews, but how to analyze them as well. Our analysis of a story review example can end your struggles if you don’t know where to get ideas for writing your own review.

Now after reading through our post and checking whether you know how to write a review of a story or you can use our research paper writing service . Practice more to write high-quality reviews and gain success. Do not impose your vision on readers – read through review samples to know how to express your opinion better. If you stick to all the guidelines, you will be able to complete great reviews.

Give your grades a boost

Original papers by high quality experts

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Writers' Workshop

Ada zhang winner of a 2024 whiting award in fiction.

Ada Zhang was named as one of 10 recipients of the Whiting Award, which is given annually to emerging writers of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama. Each honoree receives $50,000 from the Whiting Foundation, one of the largest monetary gifts for early-career writers. 

Zhang, who is from Austin, Texas, completed her undergraduate degree at Baylor University and worked in publishing until enrolling in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop with a Maytag Fellowship. She graduated from the workshop in 2020. 

Zhang’s short stories have appeared in several publications, such as A Public Space , McSweeney’s , and Alaska Quarterly Review . Her first story collection, The Sorrows of Others , was published in 2023. She was also a National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” honoree last year. 

Zhang’s “graceful, crystalline stories explore the paradox that historical silences and legacies of the past—in particular, the impact of the Cultural Revolution on Chinese Americans—can lead to new openings and new voices,” the foundation wrote in announcing the award.

https://www.whiting.org/awards/winners/ada-zhang#/

• Entertainment

Here Are the 12 New Books You Should Read in April

These are independent reviews of the products mentioned, but TIME receives a commission when purchases are made through affiliate links at no additional cost to the purchaser.

T he best books coming in April include historian Erik Larson ’s latest nonfiction thriller, former U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey ’s meditation on writing, and Salman Rushdie ’s agonizing account of the brutal knife attack he suffered two years ago. Other notable releases include a pair of career-spanning anthologies that celebrate the works of cultural critic Maggie Nelson and historian Nell Irvin Painter , as well as Amor Towles ’ first collection of short stories. Alyssa Cole ’s new mystery features a protagonist struggling with dissociative identity disorder, while former therapist Patric Gagne hopes to recontextualize the term “sociopath” with her debut memoir of the same name. 

Here, the 12 best books to read this month.

The Cemetery of Untold Stories , Julia Alvarez (April 2)

In Julia Alvarez ’s seventh adult novel, The Cemetery of Untold Stories, acclaimed writer Alma Cruz inherits a piece of her homeland, the Dominican Republic. After the death of her close friend and fellow author, Alma decides to retire and turn her plot of land into a graveyard for the unpublished tales she’d like to finally put to rest. But just because Alma is ready to abandon her characters, some of whom are based on real historical figures, it doesn’t mean they are ready to go peacefully. Mystical and moving, The Cemetery of Untold Stories shows why some stories must be told no matter how hard you try to bury them.

Buy Now : The Cemetery of Untold Stories on Bookshop | Amazon

Village Weavers , Myriam J. A. Chancy (April 2)

For fans of Elena Ferrante : Myriam J. A. Chancy’s Village Weavers is a wistful look at a complicated female friendship that spans decades and continents. Growing up in1940s Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Gertie and Sisi are the best of friends until a devastating secret that bonds their families tears them apart. The book follows the two women as they fall in and out of one another’s lives amid a violent dictatorship, and struggle with infertility and terminal illness. When Sisi gets an unexpected call from Gertie in 2002, decades after they last spoke, she must decide whether she is ready to forgive—or forget—all that they have shared.

Buy Now : Village Weavers on Bookshop | Amazon

Sociopath , Patric Gagne (April 2)

Writer and former therapist Patric Gagne first discovered she was a sociopath in college. But, in her provocative debut memoir, Sociopath , she admits that there were signs long before she was diagnosed. With incredible candor, she details the violent outbursts she exhibited as a child that would lead to near run-ins with the law in her teens and 20s. “Most of the time I felt nothing,” she writes, “so I did bad things to make the nothingness go away.” Despite her lifelong lack of empathy, shame, and guilt, she has become a loving wife and mother, something she knows doesn’t fit with pop culture’s portrayal of sociopaths as murderers, villains, and monsters. In her memoir, Gagne looks to destigmatize the often misunderstood mental disorder, now more commonly known as antisocial personality disorder , while offering compassion to those, like her, who are trying to change what it means to be a sociopath.

Buy Now : Sociopath on Bookshop | Amazon

We Loved It All , Lydia Millet (April 2)

Lydia Millet ’s first foray into nonfiction, We Loved It All: A Memory of Life, questions what humans lose when they ignore their connection to the animal kingdom. With great passion and indignation, the acclaimed novelist behind 2022’s Dinosaurs takes aim at corporations whose greed has endangered the world’s wildlife. She looks at how the “ Crying Indian” anti-litter campaign from the 1970s allowed big business to place the onus on consumers to clean up the environmental mess they played the largest role in causing. By sharing personal anecdotes about her own childhood, as well as the experiences of raising her son and daughter, Millet shows how caring about the smallest creatures that live among us is tied to the fight for economic justice around the globe. With her mournful yet often hopeful rumination on our current state of existence, Millet reminds us that we are not alone in this world.

Buy Now : We Loved It All on Bookshop | Amazon

Like Love , Maggie Nelson (April 2)

Like Love draws on two decades of Maggie Nelson’s career as a critic of art in all its forms. The collection of previously published work, arranged in chronological order, includes essays on, tributes to, and conversations with creatives the author deeply admires: musician Björk, poet Eileen Myles, fine artist Kara Walker , the late queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick , novelist Ben Lerner , philosopher Judith Butler , and writer and theater critic Hilton Als, whose words inspired the book’s title. When examining the art she loves, Nelson uses incisive and analytical prose, but her scholarly style doesn’t take away from the joy she feels for the work. “Words aren’t just what’s left,” she writes of why we need criticism. “They’re what we have to offer.”

Buy Now : Like Love on Bookshop | Amazon

Table for Two , Amor Towles (April 2)

Amor Towles ’ Table For Two is an intimate collection of six short stories that take place in early 2000s New York, and a 1930s Hollywood-set novella that picks up where his 2011 debut, Rules of Civility , left off. The book, which was written while he was meant to be working on his fourth novel , focuses on brief but fateful encounters between strangers, would-be business partners, and estranged relatives. Most of these conversations take place at a table set for two, the perfect place to share a tête-à-tête about forgery or bootlegging or even the blackmailing of screen legend Olivia de Havilland . Table For Two is a smorgasbord of deliciously mischievous tales imbued with Towles’ signature wit and worldliness.

Buy Now : Table for Two on Bookshop | Amazon

The House of Being , Natasha Trethewey (April 9)

In The House of Being, which was originally delivered as a 2022 prize lecture at Yale University, Pulitzer Prize winner Natasha Trethewey takes readers back to her grandmother’s home outside of Gulfport, Miss., where the author learned to read and write. It was there that her neighbors flew Confederate flags with pride, and her late mother—whose death at the hands of her ex-husband was the focus of Trethewey’s best-selling 2020 memoir, Memorial Drive — took to singing “Lift Every Voice and Sing” any time she passed one. It was also where, Trethewey would later learn, formerly enslaved men and women were educated after the Civil War, their stories lost to time because they had not been written down. With The House of Being, Trethewey doesn’t just explore the reasons why she writes. She also offers a compassionate argument for why we must all be the authors of our own stories.

Buy Now : The House of Being on Bookshop | Amazon

One of Us Knows , Alyssa Cole (April 16)

Best-selling author Alyssa Cole ’s latest novel, One of Us Knows, is a paranoia-filled murder mystery full of twists and turns. Preservationist Kenetria “Ken” Nash has taken a job as the caretaker of a gothic castle on a remote island on the Hudson River in the hopes of getting back on her feet. For the last six years, Ken has struggled with dissociative identity disorder, which causes her to, without much warning, “switch” between multiple identities. Lately, Ken has found it harder to keep her “headmates”—precocious toddler Keke, judgy perfectionist Della, and the sophisticated Solomon, to name a few—in check. When a man from Ken’s past is found dead in the historic home, she must enlist her headmates’ help in hopes of clearing her name, all the while knowing she could be the killer she is looking for.

Buy Now : One of Us Knows on Bookshop | Amazon

Knife , Salman Rushdie (April 16)

On Aug. 12, 2022, Salman Rushdie was stabbed nearly 10 times while at a speaking engagement in western New York. With his new memoir, Knife, Rushdie writes about the violent attack that left him with PTSD , limited mobility in his left hand, and the loss of sight in his right eye, offering an intimate and often harrowing account of what happened that day and what life has been like for him since. (The trial for Rushdie’s alleged attacker , who has been charged with attempted murder, has been postponed due to the release of this book, since it can serve as potential evidence.) Rushdie has said that writing Knife was an important step in the healing process. “This was a necessary book for me to write,” he said in a statement . “A way to take charge of what happened, and to answer violence with art.”

Buy Now : Knife on Bookshop | Amazon

I Just Keep Talking , Nell Irvin Painter (April 23)

For the past five decades, acclaimed writer, artist, historian, and critic Nell Irvin Painter’s work has felt ahead of its time. I Just Keep Talking, a decades-spanning collection of more than 40 of her previously published essays, shows just how prescient her work really was. The anthology includes a 1982 essay on the effect white educators’ reluctance to teach Black resistance would have on how the history of slavery is taught in America . In other pieces, she examines how Spike Lee ’s film Malcolm X reinvented the activist and breaks down the gender and racial stereotypes that hurt Anita Hill ’s case against Clarence Thomas during his 1991 Supreme Court confirmation hearing. A more recent essay from 2022 offers a strong warning to Democrats: If you “jettison voting rights in order to court white voters without college degrees,” she writes, you’ll risk repeating the mistakes of Reconstruction . This insightful anthology shows why Painter, now 81 years old, is still one of the most important voices in America.

Buy Now : I Just Keep Talking on Bookshop | Amazon

Lucky , Jane Smiley (April 23)

As the title of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jane Smiley ’s coming-of-age novel Lucky implies, protagonist Jodie Rattler has always been more fortunate than most. While attending college at Penn State in the 1960s, Jodie decides she’d like to become a folk singer, so she records a song that becomes a surprise hit. She soon finds herself living like a true bohemian, recording an album in New York, touring the country, and earning comparisons to musical luminaries like Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell . But as the pressure builds for her to leave school and focus on her music career full time, she finds herself questioning her future. Lucky offers a tender look at one young woman’s journey to understand who she has become and who she’d like to be when she finally grows up.

Buy Now : Lucky on Bookshop | Amazon

The Demon of Unrest , Erik Larson (April 30)

After tackling World War II by focusing on Winston Churchill’s leadership during the Blitz with The Splendid and the Vile , one of TIME’s best books of 2020 , Erik Larson returns with a historical nonfiction thriller set before the start of the U.S. Civil War . The Demon of Unrest looks at the chaotic five-month period between the November 1860 election of President Abraham Lincoln and the April 1861 surrender of Fort Sumter , which marked the official beginning of the war. Using journals, slave ledgers, plantation records, and secret correspondence, Larson offers an intriguing look at a young country on the brink of collapse. He reexamines the lead-up to the four-year conflict by putting the focus not only on the rebellion’s major players, but also on those on the periphery: Maj. Robert Anderson, the Union commander at Fort Sumter, Edmund Ruffin, an agricultural reformer and ardent secessionist, James H. Hammond, a senator and wealthy plantation owner from South Carolina, and Mary Boykin Chesnut, the wealthy wife of a lawyer and senator whose diary became an invaluable resource for the author.

Buy Now : The Demon of Unrest on Bookshop | Amazon

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Browsing: Best Kids Stories

The best new audiobooks for little listeners.

This month’s best audiobooks for the littlest listeners among us are full of variety, from a history of Brazilian capoeira to a picture book all about berries!

Coyote Lost and Found, by Dan Gemeinhart | Book Review

A story that will stay with you long after you’ve turned the final page, Coyote Lost and Found is a testament to the enduring power of love and hope.

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Play with Me, by Kat Chen | Awareness Tour

Is your toddler looking for someone to play with? Join us on a picnic playdate as we explore Kat Chen’s board book Play with Me!

Play with Me, by Kat Chen | Dedicated Review

Play with Me is a perfect companion for young readers, for learning social skills, or just for whiling away a few quiet minutes with a friend.

Black Girl You Are Atlas, by Renée Watson | Book Review

Black Girl You Are Atlas by Renée Watson, illustrated by Ekua Holmes, is an empowering collection of poetry that celebrates the identity of Black girls.

Legends of Lotus Island: The Guardian Test | Book Review

Steeped in a fantasy rendition of Asian culture and mythology, The Guardian Test is a fast-paced, fresh, and riveting twist on fantasy school stories.

Andrea Wang Weaves Threads of Belonging: Exploring Identity in ‘Summer at Squee’

Andrea Wang shares insights into her latest book, Summer at Squee, where she explores themes of community, identity, and inclusivity.

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This month’s selections for excellent teen audiobooks include a free-verse memoir, a thrilling fantasy with dragons and intrigue, and more.

Exploring Love and Light in ‘Ferris’ with Kate DiCamillo

Join us for a captivating exploration of Kate DiCamillo’s latest literary masterpiece, Ferris. Prepare to be swept away by a granddaughter and her grandmother.

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Judi Dench gets chatty and cheeky about Shakespeare

Part intimate memoir, part insightful commentary, dench’s book, written with brendan o’hea, shows how the dame and the bard make a winning combination.

At one stage in her long and glittering career, Judi Dench might have agreed with half of the old show business dictum to never work with children or animals. In 1987, she was playing the title heroine in a production of Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra” at the National Theatre in London. Three harmless snakes were playing the deadly asps; one of them escaped. After receiving the fatal venomous bite and departing “this vile world,” Dench’s Egyptian queen was carried off the stage to what sounded to her like hissing from the audience. When Dench came back on to take her bow, she saw the missing serpent slithering out the side of her wig. “Old snakey, he wanted to be there for the curtain call,” she recalls. Not that she reacted so lightly at the time: “I lost my voice for two days, I was so traumatized.”

This is only one of many colorful anecdotes to be found in a new book in which the much-loved and critically lauded actress celebrates Shakespeare’s art and comments on her craft. It is a craft Dench has honed to perfection over a career spanning seven decades, from the role of Ophelia in “Hamlet” in 1957 as an ingenue fresh out of drama school to Paulina in “The Winter’s Tale” in 2015 while an 81-year-old national treasure. “ Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent ” takes the form of in-depth interviews that Dench gave over four years. Part intimate memoir, part insightful commentary, the book shows how the Dame and the Bard make a winning combination.

Each chapter revolves around an individual play and Dench’s role or roles in it. Her interlocutor, the actor and director Brendan O’Hea, steers her through the drama and feeds her questions or prompts relating to a variety of aspects, from plot strands to line delivery to character development. Dench shares her expertise and her experience, and along the way sprinkles in witty recollections from productions.

In the opening section on “Macbeth,” she reveals that the Scottish play was the reason she went into theater in the first place. For her, it has everything: “Beautifully constructed, terrific story, great part, good memories — I remember so much of it. Short, no interval, pub (Dirty Duck): heaven.” She views “Macbeth” as a thriller and in other chapters argues that “The Merry Wives of Windsor” resembles a pantomime and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” a comic sex romp (“Titania and Oberon are so randy”). In the latter, she enjoyed playing First Fairy, a character with an attitude and an agenda: “She can’t hang around chatting, justifying her movements to some sprite she doesn’t know — she has a job to do.”

When playing Mistress Quickly in “Henry V,” Dench imagined her as “flinty, as if she’s been hewn out of rock,” while as lonely soul Imogen in “Cymbeline” she “often felt like Sisyphus pushing an enormous boulder up a hill.” Dench had a better time of it as Hamlet’s mother, “Dirty Gerty,” and particularly relished being bedecked in extravagant costumes and jewelry. As Dench remarks, “I think Gertrude is quite a bling person.”

Discussions of some plays and parts provide springboards to fascinating tangential topics. While dissecting “Coriolanus,” Dench muses on why certain plays are more popular than others. An examination of “The Merchant of Venice” — for Dench “a horrible play” — leads to the issue of censorship. And during reflections on “King Lear,” Dench veers off to speak out against updating Shakespeare to render his work more accessible: Simplifying him, she argues, “traduces the language, reduces our imagination.”

At regular junctures, Dench imparts nuggets of wisdom. We learn about lighthouse acting and pickup lines. We get a how-to guide in miniature — how to play comedy and tragedy, how to give a soliloquy and speak iambic pentameter. Dench believes that less is more in her profession: “Acting is learning how to edit,” she explains. “Finding the minimum we have to do to create the maximum effect.” She has little time for actors who take the role home with them (“You take the character off with the costume”) or who, in pre-performance read-throughs, “sit around and intellectualize it all.” On several occasions, she employs a character to illustrate her point: Fight scenes have to be choreographed, she says, “otherwise you’re going to get through a lot of Desdemonas.”

The book is interspersed with short sections on theater-related subjects, with titles as varied as “Critics,” “Audience,” “Rehearsal,” “Stratford-upon-Avon” (“where my heart is,” Dench confesses) and the inviting “Fireside Ramblings.” Here and elsewhere, Dench recounts tales of acting alongside the likes of Ian McKellen, Kenneth Branagh, Daniel Day-Lewis, Anthony Hopkins and her late husband, Michael Williams. Her most compelling stories relate to antics backstage (“a subterranean world which the audience never get to see — and maybe for the better”) and hiccups onstage — careless accidents, dubious props and mangled lines. Once, in “Romeo and Juliet,” she sneezed while lying on her lover’s tomb; another time, she spoke the line “Where is my father and my mother, nurse?” — and heard her father call out, “Here we are, darling, in row H.”

Dench likes when things backfire — “There’s magic to be mined in mistakes” — and many of her stories and responses are imbued with impish glee. She comes across as chatty and cheeky but also perceptive and analytical. In addition, she is impressively no-nonsense, quick to chide O’Hea for overthinking matters, and refreshingly self-deprecating, describing her Cleopatra as not so much a stately sovereign as a “menopausal munchkin.”

This book could have been a cross between a starchy academic study and a meandering trawl through Dench’s past glories. Instead, it is a delight, at once lively, captivating and informative. At 89, Dench’s eyesight is deteriorating, but she refuses to let age completely wither her. Throughout these pages, her memory remains prodigious, her passion for Shakespeare undimmed, and she still has the capacity to entertain.

Malcolm Forbes is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in the Economist, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal and the New Republic.

Shakespeare

The Man Who Pays the Rent

By Judi Dench with Brendan O’Hea

St. Martin’s. 400 pp. $32

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Book Reviews

In 'like happiness,' a woman struggles to define a past, destructive relationship.

Ilana Masad

When Tatum Vega gets a call from a New York Times journalist asking about famous author M. Domínguez, it's as if a ghost has appeared in the comfortable home she shares with her partner, Vera, in Chile.

Three years have passed since her last interaction with M., whom she had the privilege of knowing as Mateo, and she thought she'd finally shaken off the remnants of their relationship. But when the journalist tells her that a young woman has accused M. of sexual assault, Tatum is both surprised and not. "You weren't that person with me, not exactly," she writes to Mateo, "but the fingerprints of our stories are strikingly similar."

So begins Ursula Villarreal-Moura's debut novel, Like Happiness, which movingly portrays its protagonist coming to terms with the imbalanced, difficult, and sometimes harmful friendship with Mateo that was, at the same time, an essential, and at times euphoric, part of her life for many years.

In short chapters set in Tatum's present-day, 2015, she narrates the process of deciding whether to talk to the NYT journalist investigating Mateo's misdeeds, and how much she should divulge. Most of the novel, however, addresses Mateo directly, as Tatum tries to untangle the story of their decade-long unequal friendship, to understand how early its painful patterns began, and to acknowledge her own role within their dynamic, which kept her trapped within a life smaller than the one she wanted and deserved.

Raised by working-class parents in Texas, Tatum fell in love with books early, finding in them a way to "counter the loneliness and boredom of being an only child." When she goes to Williams College, she feels like she doesn't fit in, believes she might be the only Latina on campus, and admits that in the early days she was "too proud to say that perhaps Massachusetts—home of Plath and Sexton—wasn't for [her]." When, in her senior year, she comes across M. Domínguez's short story collection, Happiness , she's enraptured, and reads it over and over again. Finally, she decides to write to M., care of his publisher. In part, her letter reads: "Although I'm Chicana, not Boricua like you or your characters, I identify with the Latino culture in your work and have found your book to be affirming. It's not often that I see myself reflected in literature, TV, or music... I find your book so indispensable. Your work legitimizes Latino culture and quietly celebrates it. I apologize for placing so much responsibility upon your writing. My intention isn't to overwhelm you, but to thank you."

Unexpectedly, Mateo responds, and soon he and Tatum are exchanging emails, phone calls, and the intimacies of their daily lives, the music they enjoy, the books they revere, and more. Mateo even comes to stay with Tatum on Cape Cod when she gets a housesitting gig there for the summer after she graduates. Is this inappropriate? Tatum is 22 or so at this point, clearly an adult; she knows her own mind and can certainly foster a friendship with an older man if she wishes. But Mateo is 30, a renowned if tokenized author, with more money, power, and status than his young admirer.

Over the course of the following decade, Tatum becomes more and more intertwined with Mateo's life. She travels with him to reading gigs all over the country; she tends to his insecurities and soothes his ego; she nurses both romantic and platonic feelings for him, sometimes reciprocated yet often not; and, perhaps most importantly, she allows her preoccupation with both his brilliance and his confessed brokenness to undermine her own desires, aspirations, and difficulties.

In a 2022 interview with the literary magazine TriQuarterly , Villarreal-Moura said, "Everyone assumes my fiction is autobiographical. That probably has to do with my being a woman. People always assume women are writing about their lives." Back then, Like Happiness had only recently sold, and all potential readers knew then was that it was about a lengthy relationship between a famous Puerto Rican writer and a young Mexican American college student that begins when she writes him a fan letter. Villarreal-Moura shared that based on the mere premise, people began asking whether the novel was autobiographical, to which she replied, "no. It's a product of my imagination."

The author is correct in her assessment that writers who are women and/or queer are far too often assumed to be writing autobiographically. In the case of this novel in particular, however, it's easy to see why some contemporary readers would assume some basis in reality; the story of someone like Mateo taking advantage of younger women is all too common, and various literary luminaries have been accused of abusive behavior during the last decade (and many more are spoken about in the hushed tones and private messages of the whisper network).

Which is to say that while her novel isn't based on anyone in particular, Villarreal-Moura has tapped into something as resonant as it is recognizable, and in Like Happiness has given us a beautiful work of fiction that dwells in the gray areas between celebrity and fan, victim and victimizer, absolution and blame.

Ilana Masad is a fiction writer, book critic, and author of the novel All My Mother's Lovers.

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The Best Reviewed Books of 2020: Short Story Collections

Featuring nicole krauss, stephen king, emma cline, zora neale hurston, and more.

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2020—the longest year that has ever been—is almost at an end, and that means it’s time for us to break out the calculators and tabulate the best reviewed books of past twelve months.

Yes, using reviews drawn from more than 150 publications, over the next two weeks we’ll be revealing the most critically-acclaimed books of 2020, in the categories of (deep breath): Memoir & Biography;   Sci-Fi, Fantasy & Fantasy ; Short Story Collections; Essay Collections; Graphic Literature; Poetry; Mystery & Crime; Literature in Translation; General Fiction; and General Nonfiction.

1. To Be a Man by Nicole Krauss (Harper)

18 Rave • 6 Positive • 2 Mixed

Read an interview with Nicole Krauss here

“… like talking all night with a brilliant friend … Krauss imbues her prose with authoritative intensity. In short, her work feels lived. Some of these stories appeared earlier, in the New Yorker and elsewhere. But re-encountering them in a collection lets us absorb them as siblings … Krauss’s explorations of interior struggle press on, unflinching; aperçus feel wrested from depths … With chilling casualness, Krauss conveys the murderous realities lurking behind the scrim of social surfaces, that young women routinely face … Settings range globally without fanfare, as do Krauss’s gelid portraits of modern arrangements … the hallucinatory ‘Seeing Ershadi,’ in which a dancer and her friend become obsessed with an Iranian actor, seems to distill the strange urgency of Krauss’s art … What Ershadi represents to the women slowly unfurls, and (like much of this fine collection) continues to haunt a reader’s mind and heart.”

–Joan Frank ( The Washington Post )

2. The Office of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans (Riverhead)

14 Rave • 4 Positive

“… a new collection that is so smart and self-assured it’s certain to thrust her into the top tier of American short story writers. Evans’ stories feel particularly urgent at this moment of national reckoning over race. While they aren’t specifically about being Black any more than Alice Munro’s are about being white, many of the characters are shaped by the social, economic and cultural conditions unique to African American life … she brings an anthropologist’s eye to the material conditions of her characters’ lives … The hands-down masterpiece of the collection is the title novella … Reading these stories is like [an] amusement park ride—afterward, you feel a sense of lightness and exhilaration.”

–Ann Levin ( USA Today )

3. I Hold a Wolf By the Ears by Laura Van den Berg (FSG)

14 Rave • 2 Positive

Listen to a conversation between Laura Van den Berg and Catherine Lacey here

“The terrain of Van den Berg’s difficult, beautiful and urgent new book, I Hold a Wolf by the Ears , is an ecosystem of weird and stirring places you’ll want to revisit, reconsider, maybe even take shelter in. It’s easy to get going, because Van den Berg is such a master of setups … Possessing some of Karen Russell’s spookiness and Otessa Moshfegh’s penchant for unsettling observations about the way we live now—personally incisive but alive with a kind of ambient political intelligence—Van den Berg feels like the writer we not only want but maybe need right now … There is range here, particularly in characters and relationships: single people, mothers and daughters, loners, but also people engaged in the long dance of marriage … Van den Berg is so consistently smart and kind, bracingly honest, keen about mental illness and crushing about everything from aging to evil that you might not be deluded in hoping that the usual order of literary fame could be reversed: that an author with respectable acclaim for her novels might earn wider recognition for a sneakily brilliant collection of stories.”

–Nathan Deuel ( The Los Angeles Times )

4. Verge by Lidia Yuknavitch (Riverhead)

12 Rave • 5 Positive • 1 Mixed

Read a story from Verge here

“With the powers of her prose on full, incandescent display, 6½ pages is all Yuknavitch needs to illuminate the connections between the body and the spirit, the fists and the heart, both beating in their losing battles … In these 20 efficient and affecting stories, Yuknavitch unveils the hidden worlds, layered under the one we know, that can be accessed only via trauma, displacement and pain. There is a vein of the wisdom of the grotesque throughout … the damaged beauty of these misfits keeps the reader leaning in.”

–Nicholas Mancusi ( TIME )

5. Sorry For Your Trouble by Richard Ford (Ecco)

11 Rave • 4 Positive • 3 Mixed

“The finest and most substantial story here is ‘The Run of Yourself.’ One could say is has the richness and breadth of a novel, but that would be to slight the short-story form, of which Mr. Ford has repeatedly proved himself a master … However understated and oblique, Sorry for Your Trouble —which is what Irish people say to the bereaved at a funeral—is both a coherent work of art and a subtle and convincing portrait of contemporary American life among the moneyed middle class. None of the main characters has to worry about money, which highlights the emotional malaise that underlies their lives and their frequent and almost absent-minded couplings and uncouplings. In the background are wars, financial crises, natural vicissitudes. This is America, and Richard Ford is its chronicler. In these superbly wrought tales he catches, with exquisite precision…the irresistible melancholy that is the mark of American life.”

–John Banville ( The Wall Street Journal )

6. Daddy by Emma Cline (Random House)

9 Rave • 8 Positive

Read Emma Cline on Anaïs Nin’s erotic fiction and John Cheever’s journals here

“In an era whose ascendant short-story practitioners lean into high-concept experiments of genre and form, Emma Cline represents something of a throwback. The 10 stories that constitute her first collection, Daddy, are almost classical in structure—you won’t find a fragmentary collage, list or screenplay among them. Though she’s not one for a sudden, curious departure of voice or dissolution of the fourth wall, Cline has an unnerving narrative proprioception, and her stories have the clean, bright lines of modernist architecture … As for her style, she seems to eschew the telegraphic mode made popular by writers like Sally Rooney or Rachel Cusk for something at once direct and musical. Cline’s idiom is earnestness punctuated by millennial cool—but nothing too fussy, everything in just the right place … The aesthetic pleasure of Cline’s writing is anesthetizing. So much so that one could conceivably read these stories with the same drugged passivity with which one shuffles through a lifestyle catalog. But that would be a mistake … Cline is an astonishingly gifted stylist, but it is her piercing understanding of modern humiliation that makes these stories vibrate with life … the characters shift uncomfortably through the beautifully appointed shoe box dioramas of their lives, aware at once of their own insignificance and also of their desire for prominence. They ask if anything matters as though nothing does, and yet hope to be contradicted. But perhaps we all do. Perhaps, in these brilliant stories, that is the most daring and human thing of all.”

–Brandon Taylor ( The New York Times Book Review )

7. You Will Never Be Forgotten by Mary South (FSG Originals)

9 Rave • 6 Positive • 1 Mixed

Listen to an interview with Mary South here

“South writes as though she has always been where we find ourselves now: looking back on a world where we believed we might gain personal agency over technology’s dominion, entering one where such agency is a luxury we might never again hope to afford … stories of exceptional loss, spilling out at the point of conflict between the cool detachment of the technological world and the tender vulnerability of the users living within it … This collection’s power, though, comes from South’s dark sensibility, her comfort with brutality, and her narrative insistence that, while the nightmare of tech capitalism won’t wholly eradicate the personal and the private, it will compress beyond recognition the spaces where personal, private moments can unfold … South writes with the assurance of someone who knows she has no answers to give. But instead of resulting in a shrugging ambivalence, You Will Never Be Forgotten mounts an ever more effective critique of technology-amplified structural inequality … [the] stories are united by South’s keen examination of the thrill and risk of human connection—between lovers, siblings, parent and child, care-giver and care-receiver, and digitally connected strangers—under increasingly cruel conditions … Still, You Will Never Be Forgotten shows us there is still tenderness to be found, and protected, in the brave new world to come.”

–Jennifer Schaffer ( The Nation )

8. If It Bleeds by Stephen King (Scribner)

6 Rave • 10 Positive • 1 Mixed

“Nobody does novellas like Stephen King … a quartet of stories that are a little too long to be labelled short, all of which are packed with that uniquely King combination of fear and empathy … One of the joys of King’s novella collections is the reminder that he, perhaps more than any of his bestselling peers, has a tremendous gift for giving stories exactly the amount of space they need to be properly told. Sometimes, that results in 700-plus page epics. Other times, just 70. Whatever it takes to get the story from his head to the page—that’s what King gives you. It’s remarkable really, that an author can create stories that cause a reader to shiver, to smile and to shed a tear in the space of a few pages—but really, should anything Stephen King does surprise us anymore? … practically pulses with the humanistic empathy that marks the best of King’s work. It’s an outstanding quartet, featuring four tales that are wildly different from one another, yet undeniably bound together by the voice of our finest storyteller. There is much to fear in the worlds created by Stephen King, but even in the depth of his darkest shadows, a light of hope steadily glows. More exceptional work from the maestro … Keep ‘em coming, Mr. King.”

–Allen Adams ( The Maine Edge )

9. Show Them a Good Time by Nicole Flattery (Bloomsbury)

7 Rave • 7 Positive • 2 Mixed

“Nicole Flattery’s publisher paid big money for these debut stories (plus a novel-in-progress), and it’s not hard to see why: they’re often extremely funny—peculiar as well as ha-ha—and highly addictive … Flattery’s themes are work, womanhood and early-to-midlife indirection, all tackled slantwise … It’s easy to read but trickier to get a handle on: Flattery’s off-kilter voice blends chatty candour and hard-to-interpret allegory (think Diane Williams or 90s Lorrie Moore), with the deadpan drollery and casually disturbing revelations heightened by her fondness for cutting any obvious connective tissue between sentences … Trauma lurks in the background, with allusions to attempted suicide, abuse and a 13-year-old’s miscarriage … Yet Flattery’s stories don’t depend on bringing such things to light; they’re just there—part of a woman’s life—which ultimately proves more disconcerting … Flattery…doesn’t seem too bothered about sewn-up narratives running from A to B; it’s a mark of her art in these strange, darkly funny stories that we aren’t either.”

–Anthony Cummins ( The Guardian )

10. Hitting a Straight Lick With a Crooked Stick by Zora Neale Hurston (Amistad)

7 Rave • 4 Positive

Read a story from Hitting a Straight Lick With a Crooked Stick here

“…a revelation not just in its celebration of Hurston’s lesser-known efforts as a writer of short stories but also in the subjects and settings that it takes on … Hurston’s stories do not merely document black experience in the early 20th century; they testify to larger truths about black life … tender and wry … Fans and scholars of Hurston’s work and the uninitiated alike will find many delights in these complex, thoughtful and wickedly funny portraits of black lives and communities … this book is a significant testament to the enduring resonance of black women’s writing.”

–Naomi Jackson ( The Washington Post )

Our System: RAVE = 5 points • POSITIVE = 3 points • MIXED = 1 point • PAN = -5 points

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April 12, 2024

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Books | The Book Club: “The House on Mango Street” and…

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Books | the book club: “the house on mango street” and more short reviews from readers, one book earns 4 out of 4 stars.

Editor’s note: The opinions of the smart, well-read women in my Denver book club mean a lot, and often determine what the rest of us choose to pile onto our bedside tables. So we asked them, and all Denver Post readers, to share these mini-reviews with you. Have any to offer? Email [email protected].

“Airplane Mode: An Irreverent History of Travel,” by Shahnaz Habib (Catapult, 2023)

This is not your typical Rick Steves (or even Paul Theroux) travel book. Rather, Habib dissects what it means to travel in the 21st century, as opposed to, say, what it means to emigrate. Who gets to travel, where and when? Who gets (or does not get) a passport or even a visa? How did “traveling” even become a thing? (Think: the Grand Tours of Europe in the late 19th century and early 20th centuries.) Travel is a form of consumerism, you might even say. But what does it mean to be a traveler in a post-colonial world, in the midst of a climate crisis? Habib addresses these questions and more in this enlightening and entertaining book. — 2 1/2 stars (out of 4); Kathleen Lance, Denver

“The Women,” by Kristin Hannah (St. Martins Press, 2024)

Kristin Hannah is an enormously successful writer of compulsively readable historic fiction. “The Women” — a tribute to the often overlooked women who served in the Vietnam War — is no exception. The story follows idealistic nurse Frankie McGrath through two tours of duty, bolstered by friends Ethel and Barb. Work shifts are long and brutal, yet after-hours allow them to blow off steam with drinking, dancing and romancing.

Part One is gripping as Frankie sheds her naivete and advances her medical skills. Part Two follows her home to an ungrateful, unwelcoming America.  Hannah’s storytelling is strong enough to more than balance occasional writing gaffs, but uneven pacing is more of an issue. Part Two seems underdeveloped, despite its length. —  2 1/2 stars (out of 4); Neva Gronert, Parker

“The House on Mango Street,” by Sandra Cisneros (Arte Publico Press, 1984)

Hispanic families, known for their emotional intimacy, reveal their benefits as well as their challenges in this trio of stories. Sandra Cisneros earned national attention for this first book of fiction, which includes insights into her journey to success and shows that “coming of age” is a trip for many young people, regardless of their backgrounds or ethnicities. Her work has been called “sensitive, alert, nuanced,” as the reader tracks Esperanza, a young Latina girl, while she grows up in Chicago, and deals with issues of social class, race, sexuality, identity and gender. A best-seller and winner of a number of literary awards, it educates as it entertains. — 4 stars (out of 4); Bonnie McCune, Denver; bonniemccune.com

“The Prospectors,” by Ariel Djanikian (William Morrow, 2023)

This is the story (on the surface) of a family who struck it rich in the Klondike Gold Rush and then amassed great wealth through shrewd investments. It also explores greed, ambition, family loyalty, family secrets and, ultimately, the moral questions of justice for and restitution owed to displaced native peoples. The individual characters are, for the most part, finely drawn and the historical details of life in the Alaskan frontier are captivating.  A fascinatingly good read. — 1 1/2 stars (out of 4); Kathleen Lance, Denver

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The Shortlist

3 Story Collections That Show Just How Strange Life Can Be

New books by Bora Chung, Rafael Frumkin and Laird Hunt explore the chaotic intricacies of being alive.

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By Alexandra Kleeman

Alexandra Kleeman is a novelist and Guggenheim fellow and the author, most recently, of “Something New Under the Sun.”

• Published March 8, 2024 Updated March 26, 2024

We were promised a future full of innovation, a tomorrow filled with sleek technologies that would whisk us far away from the most mundane aspects of our humanity. Technology has indeed gotten sleeker — so why do we seem so stubbornly the same? The wistful, emotionally unmoored protagonists of the Korean writer Bora Chung’s second story collection, YOUR UTOPIA: Stories (Algonquin Books, 241 pp., $18.99) , translated by Anton Hur, do their best to navigate this quandary.

In one story, a low-level employee at the Center for Immortality Research organizes an anniversary party at the institution even as the question of her own immortality hovers in the background. In another, a highly contagious disease that causes cannibalism sweeps the planet, eventually reaching a spaceship where the government is working desperately to develop a cure. The epidemic is horrifying, but that doesn’t prevent Chung from finding humor in it. “Aside from the afflicted’s tendency to regard other people as food, they were completely normal,” she writes. “It was only when cannibalism was mentioned in conversation that they responded abnormally, most notably their uniform insistence that eating people did not kill the eaten.”

Chung builds out her stories with imagination, absurdity and a dry sense of humor, all applied with X-Acto knife precision, but what stands out about her fantastical tales is not how different they are from one another so much as how much remains the same. No matter the premise behind a story, jobs still suck, suffering is still the natural product of living under society’s thumb and not even looming threats, like the danger of being eaten, can keep people from adhering to familiar structures of authority.

All of this might sound grim, but Chung’s deft handling makes these fraught obediences and tender concerns feel powerfully human. In the title story, for instance, a sentient self-driving vehicle left on Earth after humans have fled the planet finds meaning in ferrying around a damaged robot. Though the vehicle is only a smart object, its experience is richly emotive and tinged by the paradoxical affects that circulate at the end of the world. “If I want to conserve energy during the sunless nights, I need to think less. But here I am in the dark, having thoughts about having fewer thoughts.” Same, bestie.

In his gutsy collection, BUGSY AND OTHER STORIES (Simon & Schuster, 206 pp., paperback, $16.99) , Rafael Frumkin presents characters in untraditional situations who are threatened by internal and external forces as they strive to stake out a joyful place in the world.

In the title story, Bugsy, a college student struggling with repressed queer desire and debilitating depression, finds a sense of belonging by moving into a commune-like house of women who make sadomasochistic queer porn. There, one of the women, Stella, a versatile performer and committed polyamorist, unlocks Bugsy’s capacity for sexual exploration: “She tied me to the bed and made me wear a leather hood that blocked out all the light and let her lips hover above mine, breathing her Listerine-and-Mountain-Dew-and-cigarettes breath into my mouth, and then denied me kiss after kiss.” But when Stella decides that she no longer wants to be polyamorous and wants to be in a monogamous relationship with a guy named Cody instead, it sends Bugsy into a spiral of paranoid ideation.

Mental illness resurfaces in a story about a therapist experiencing a break of his own. He blacks out, slices up his arm and hallucinates that an aggressive Alex Trebek verbally abuses him. Meanwhile, he stubbornly continues to treat his patients, eventually showing up at one’s home to deliver an urgent, incomprehensible message that his empathetic patient interprets as a cry for help. In an affecting scene that calls into question the absolute authority of clinician over patient, she comforts him with lessons she has learned while in his care.

Frumkin renders focal points like crisis and desire with compelling fluidity: His characters navigate the complexities of self-discovery against the constantly shifting background of psychological slippage and the pressures of making a life worth living. For instance, a will-they-won’t-they story about the Twitch-playing celebrity e-girl Dina Valentine, who is in love with her best friend and roommate, Aubrey, keeps the reader on a knife’s edge about whether Dina’s attempts to prevent Aubrey from seeing her boyfriend will be successful, with the nature of Aubrey’s own desire a powerful opacity until the story’s end.

But the collection’s greatest strength is its way of unpacking its characters’ stuck moments and impasses through vivid gasps of insight, moments when we come into contact with the abundance of their inner life. For each of them, the obscure whole of their identity is beyond easy summarization — but as they grope their way through crises both existential and mundane, every moment feels bracingly true.

A small town in Indiana is the central protagonist of the lyrical, reflective stories in FLOAT UP, SING DOWN: Stories (Bloomsbury, 207 pp., $26.99) . The collection — written by Laird Hunt, whose novel “Zorrie” was a finalist for the National Book Award for fiction in 2021 — is composed of 14 linked tales, each set in the same town (which is also the same town in “Zorrie”) and each delving deep into the interiority of a single character as events large and small percolate through the community.

On the surface, the stories are preoccupied with the quotidian events of daily life. Candy Wilson is making deviled eggs, but forgot to buy paprika. The teenagers Della Dorner and Sugar Henry practice kissing, and reward each other for their pleasures with slices of Kraft American cheese. Neighborhood boys shoot starlings out of a tree with BBs; Della’s grandfather Hank Dunn takes Sugar for a drive. But beneath these seemingly everyday actions pulse vivid minds that gnaw on old regrets, muse on unknown futures and travel the length of personal and communal history. Their days seem ordinary but they are dense with the matter of living.

If the constant fullness of these internal monologues can sometimes feel slightly monotonous, it doesn’t detract from the gratification of reading. The book unfolds similarly to a neighborhood cookout — you brush up against one charming moment, one charming character, and then move on to the next. In this way, Hunt’s characters reveal beguiling secrets and contradictions. In one story, a slacker schemer named Turner turns out to have had a promising aptitude for ballroom dancing when he was working as a janitor: “He took to it when the school emptied out. In his heavy work boots, in the half dark with the waltz records playing. … He added flourishes of his own. He liked the way his arm felt when it went rising up and up through the air. He liked it better than anything.”

In the process of learning what makes each character tick, what feels at first like a loosely linked collection grows revelatory, unearthing an ecology of elusive connection and meaning.

An earlier version of this article misidentified a character in a story from Laird Hunt’s collection “Float Up, Sing Down.” It is Turner, not Champ, who was once a promising ballroom dancer.

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