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The Best American Short Stories 2011 (edition 2011)

by Geraldine Brooks (Editor), Heidi Pitlor (Editor)

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350773,239 (3.82)17
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The Best American Series®
First, Best, and Best-Selling

The Best American series is the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction. Each volume's series editor selects notable works from hundreds of magazines, journals, and websites. A special guest editor, a leading writer in the field, then chooses the best twenty or so pieces to publish. This unique system has made the Best American series the most respected â?? and most popular â?? of its kind.


The Best American Short Stories 2011 includes

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Megan Mayhew Bergman, Jennifer Egan,
Nathan Englander, Allegra Goodman,
Ehud Havazelet, Rebecca Makkai, Steven Millhauser,
George Saunders, Mark Slouka, and oth
… (more)

Member:DCloyceSmith
Title:The Best American Short Stories 2011
Authors:Geraldine Brooks
Other authors:Heidi Pitlor (Editor)
Info:Mariner Books (2011), Edition: 1, Paperback, 384 pages
Collections:Your library
Rating:****
Tags:Short story annuals

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The Best American Short Stories 2011 by Geraldine Brooks (Editor)

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» See also 17 mentions

Showing 1-5 of 7 (next | show all)
If these were the best American short stories of 2011 then I'd have to say it was an off year. With a few notable exceptions, these were average at best. ( )
  kevinkevbo | Jul 14, 2023 |
Some real gems in this collection: Foster by Claire Keegan, about a young Irish girl circa 1950s, farmed out to relatives when yet another child is born in her family; The Sleep by Caitlin Horrocks, about a dying town in North Dakota that decides to hibernate through the winter; Housewifely Arts by Megan Mayhew Bergman about a mother-daughter relationship linked by a parrot. Some lovely compact writing. ( )
  CarrieWuj | Oct 24, 2020 |
I enjoy reading these collections because they introduce me to new authors. Geraldine Brooks has picked some wonderful stories from new-to-me authors, but also from some of my favorites. In general, I enjoyed all of the stories in the collection but these the best
Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie - Ceiling
Nathan Englander - Free fruit for young widows
Rebecca McCracken - Property
Joyce Carol Oates - ID
George Saunders - Escape from Spiderhead
Mark Slouka - the Hare's Mask
Looking forward to hearing Chimamanda speak in person later this week! ( )
  steller0707 | Aug 25, 2019 |
Got solely to read George Saunders' "Escape from Spiderhead." ( )
  SaraMSLIS | Jan 26, 2016 |
This wonderful series is always a mixed bag by its nature, but kudos to the editors for always including a variety so there is something for every taste. That must be a challenge. There wasn't much to flat-out love here, but this year it was easy to see the talent and excellence in just about every selection.

My favorite was Claire Keegan's "Foster," an exceptional story that shows one of the best reasons to read this series - learning about great new voices. Keegan is clearly yet another in a long line of excellent Irish writers, and I can't wait to hunt down more by her. It was head and shoulders over the rest for me.

Sam Lipsyte's "The Dungeon Master" is an entertaining standout that helps keep the collection/series from being too earnest and stuffy.

Ehud Havazelet's "Gurov in Manhttan" is a triumph of narrative voice.

I also vote for Richard Powers's "To the Measures Fall," a passionate paean to book-love that is sure to be underrated and misunderstood.

The stories by Nathan Englander, Elizabeth McCracken, and George Saunders were also quite strong.

Sorry, but I thought the Nuila story was undercooked. It left me asking, Huh? The Bergman and Goodman stories had some nifty ideas but didn't quite convince. The Bissell and Row stories seemed more intellectually/politically well-meaning than convincing. And I've enjoyed Makkai well enough, but four in a row is quite enough. Are you really doing her a favor at this point? Time to give someone else the spotlight. There are a lot of new names in that list of other notables. And Egan won the Pulitzer for Goon Squad: was it really a good idea to include another story from that one? Defensible, of course. All the selections were. It's easy to nitpick, much harder to choose 20 that will please the crowd. Looking forward to next year! ( )
  patronus11 | Mar 31, 2013 |
Showing 1-5 of 7 (next | show all)
In her foreword, Heidi Pitlor, the series editor, openly acknowledges her own phobia of experimental fiction. Geraldine Brooks, who chose the selections for the current volume, also professes a disdain for what she calls “tricksy, clever” writing with little emotional content, or writers who treat the conventional ideal of plot “as if it were a hair in the soup, unwelcome and embarrassing.” But she is equally disturbed at the “hive mind” she finds to be at work in contemporary fiction. “There’s nothing wrong with writing stories set in bedrooms, classrooms, kitchens,” she writes. “These are the places where we spend large slabs of our lives. But the air becomes stale there.”

Is that the choice: linguistic trickery or domestic ennui? Happily, the stories in Best American Short Stories 2011, which range across an impressive spectrum of subjects and incorporate a variety of styles, belie the pessimism of the volume’s editors. Drawn from nearly a dozen different publications—McSweeney’s accounts for two, the New Yorker for six—these stories feel far removed from the suburban subdivision.
added by Shortride | editProspect, Ruth Franklin (Dec 1, 2011)
 

» Add other authors

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Brooks, GeraldineEditorprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Pitlor, HeidiEditormain authorall editionsconfirmed
Adichie, Chimamanda NgoziContributorsecondary authorall editionsconfirmed
Bergman, Megan MayhewContributorsecondary authorall editionsconfirmed
Bissell, TomContributorsecondary authorall editionsconfirmed
Egan, JenniferContributorsecondary authorall editionsconfirmed
Englander, NathanContributorsecondary authorall editionsconfirmed
Goodman, AllegraContributorsecondary authorall editionsconfirmed
Havazelet, EhudContributorsecondary authorall editionsconfirmed
Horrocks, CaitlinContributorsecondary authorall editionsconfirmed
Johnston, Bret AnthonyContributorsecondary authorall editionsconfirmed
Keegan, ClaireContributorsecondary authorall editionsconfirmed
Lipsyte, SamContributorsecondary authorall editionsconfirmed
Makkai, RebeccaContributorsecondary authorall editionsconfirmed
McCracken, ElizabethContributorsecondary authorall editionsconfirmed
Millhauser, StevenContributorsecondary authorall editionsconfirmed
Nuila, RicardoContributorsecondary authorall editionsconfirmed
Oates, Joyce CarolContributorsecondary authorall editionsconfirmed
Powers, RichardContributorsecondary authorall editionsconfirmed
Row, JessContributorsecondary authorall editionsconfirmed
Saunders, GeorgeContributorsecondary authorall editionsconfirmed
Slouka, MarkContributorsecondary authorall editionsconfirmed

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Essays. Nonfiction. HTML:

The Best American Series®
First, Best, and Best-Selling

The Best American series is the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction. Each volume's series editor selects notable works from hundreds of magazines, journals, and websites. A special guest editor, a leading writer in the field, then chooses the best twenty or so pieces to publish. This unique system has made the Best American series the most respected â?? and most popular â?? of its kind.


The Best American Short Stories 2011 includes

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Megan Mayhew Bergman, Jennifer Egan,
Nathan Englander, Allegra Goodman,
Ehud Havazelet, Rebecca Makkai, Steven Millhauser,
George Saunders, Mark Slouka, and oth

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