The Best American Short Stories 2003 (The Best American ... (ISBN 0618197486)

if you only read one story, read "The Bees":
Having never read one of the "Best American Short Stories" collections, I have no way to judge this latest edition to past efforts. The only thing I can speak to is how I felt about the stories contained in this collection and how good I think they are. There are some very fine stories in this collection with one in particular that I just loved. Louise Erdrich has long been my favorite novelist, but I was still nervous about what she would make from the short story format. "Shamengwa" is a moving story which revolves around a violin and the effect it has had, in various ways, on the lives of several members of a community. Anthony Doerr has one of the better stories in the collection, "The Shell Collector". With such a deceptively simple title, one would not expect such raw power and an interesting story about a man who lives alone but has gained worldwide attention because of the poison in one particular kind of shell. Another standout is Ryan Harty's "Why the Sky Turns Red when the Sun Goes Down", a story of a family with a robotic son (literally, the boy is a robot, or, perhaps an android). This is a touching story. The best story in the collection, and then one that blew me away is Dan Chaon's "The Bees". This one was completely unexpected and shocking. While this one would probably fall into the category of "horror", don't let that mislead you. This one starts out easy, just identifying a man and his family and we start to learn about his past. He wasn't a good man during his first marriage and he deeply regrets it. But as the story continues and we get snippets of revelation, the tension grows and so does this air of creepiness that I got while I was reading it. The tension does not let up until the end of the story, but rather it keeps building because we don't quite know what is going on and this is not what you would assume a typical "horror" story would be. It is a psychological horror and it is just gripping. This is a very fine collection, but "The Bees" was the one story that truly stood out for me and it continues to be memorable. -Joe Sherry

disappointing:
I so look forward to these annual volumes of BEST short stories. These collections normally have such a variety of subject and style. Not this volume. The subject of nearly every story was the alienation of immigrants in America. For the first time ever, I didn't finish reading the collection. I mean, I love popcorn, but want variety!

A selection from MFA Land:
Sigh. Not that most of these stories are actually bad but they do suffer from what an earlier reviewer called a "constricted cautiousness". Besides, maybe I've read too many of these types of pieces already but wow - are some of the themes here familiar. For example, being working-class in America (or a working class immigrant) really pounds rocks. And hey - there sure is a lot of quiet desperation in them there suburbs. Yawn yawn yawn.

Just very good literature:
This delicious short stories collection has taken me a long time to read. Not because the stories were boring or bad but since every story was so condensed, rich and powerful I could not easily part from a certain state of mind and place and move on the next story. I try to think what are the similar features of these 2003 stories and what can they say about our time...these are very different subjects, characters and places but maybe I could say that the stories discuss a self growth of some sort. Be it a teenager boy having his first sexual encounter with a demonically bewitching mechanically doll or a person reflecting how his life has developed from a certain event as a Chinese delivery boy in the streets of New York -- but off course I guess this is a too easy generalization that can be said of any story whatsoever. "Why the sky turns red when the sun goes down" by Ryan Harty is a good example of the stories ability to emotionally stir you up and touch an issue very relevant for parents everywhere, maybe this is what made this story so special for me. The story starts out as a very ordinary family crisis tale. The father learns that something happened to his boy and goes out to fetch him. The turning point comes when the boy is seen lying down with his hand thrown a few yards away from his body. Slowly you realize that this is a mechanical child and prepare yourself for some science fiction descriptions, which do not arrive. Apart from the very central "mechanical boy" fact this is a very real story in all its levels, with nothing "modern" or alienated about it. By the end of the story I remained with the strong feeling that mechanical or not, the parents are facing the same questions parents everywhere are asking themselves and mainly "are we doing the right thing". How do we keep our children and families safe? What are the lies we tell our children and ourselves in order to keep us safe? "Why the sky turns red..." has the heavy atmosphere that is very characteristic of many of the other stories in this collection. Something hard and heavy is hanging above and the characters are having a hard time trying to push it away, like a certain pain that has become a part of your life. The story "The Bees" suffers (or rather enjoys?) the same heavy atmosphere, only here this is not something between husband and wife but between a man and himself. The man is in turmoil because of something in the past that clouds his present. When the punishment arrives, you accept it as the anticipation and tension has been built up all along. I did not read the previous Best American Short stories but feel as if Walter Mosely has done an incredible job. Or maybe these fine authors have made his job easier. This is a masterpiece collection of stories. "Ghost Knife", "Moriya", " Baby Wilson", "Devotion" and "Future Emergencies" are some of my favorite stories in this collection. Off course I can relate easily to stories which discuss women, parents or people who are in a position similar to mine, but the greatness of these stories is that you can feel the pain, helplessness and anger of people in totally different surroundings and situations, such as immigrants recalling something in their past or people from another culture all together (the stories "Night Talkers" or "Marie-Ange's Ginen" which are set in Haiti for example). This is truly good literature and my only regret is that I cannot discuss these stories in a literature class so I can understand all the further layers. Do not miss the last few pages of the book where every writer gives a few lines about his story and how it came through.

Not that great...:
What has happened to literature? These stories are poorly written in my opinion. If these are the best, I'd hate to see the worst American short stories. Take "Moriya", a piece of trash written by Dean Paschal included in this collection for example. Hey Dean: just because no one has written a story about an adolescent "mecahnical minded" boy fantasizing, masturbating, and having sex with a doll doesn't make your story great literature. I've given up one American writing for the present...