This short story collection took me by surprise

kw: book reviews, fiction, short stories, collections

The local library finally wised up and began putting the collections of short stories in its New Books section all in one place. Their Dewey Decimal code is SS, after all. So this and the prior two books were easier to find, and allowed me to indulge my enjoyment of short stories, which I usually prefer to novels. The recent trends in science fiction novels are not to my liking.

The collection is The Story Prize: 15 Years of Great Short Fiction, edited by Larry Dark. I pay so little attention to mainstream fiction that I didn't know about the Story Prize until now. It is given to award books containing exceptional writing in short format. In the Introduction the editor waxes eloquent about the difficulty of the short format, and of how gratified he is to find many authors who still publish books full of short stories, even though "the money is in novels." After fifteen years of conferring the award, Mr. Dark gathered for this volume the best story of each year (minus one).

When I have dipped my toe into the mainstream I have usually come away dissatisfied. Many times I have stopped rather early on in an apparently aimless book or story, skipping to the ending "to see if it goes anywhere". If it does not, that's that, I am done with it. Sadly, this is more and more true of speculative fiction, particularly longer works of science fiction or fantasy (yes, I also enjoy well-written fantasy, but my standard is high, and no more than a few books per decade pass muster).

Most of the stories in The Story Prize were top-notch, to my way of thinking, so I can mention only a few. One, the longest in the volume (76 pp), is actually science fiction: "The Memory Wall", a novelette by Anthony Doerr; a way of recovering the experiences of memories has been developed, but it only helps dementia patients a little, and there is a dark side to the existence of memories outside the brain that made them. Another, "Saleema" by Daniyal Mueenudin, shows the nearly-universal experience of poor women world-wide, who have no currency but their own bodies, and does so without making the reader feel slimed. And finally, the last story, which initially seems to be going nowhere, about a man keeping a private epiphany a secret for decades; when in old age he heals an old rift with a neighbor, but also begins to harbor doubts and tells his wife, she is unsurprised, saying in effect, "Why not?"

Though a few stories were indeed "flyover country" to me, most were worth reading, and quite enjoyable. Even a couple that made me squirm (e.g. "Saleema") were stories I am glad I read.