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toniclark's review
3.0
I've always liked short-short fiction (aka flash fiction and many other names). I don't know if another term is really necessary, but the editor has given the form yet another name, "small fictions." Some of the pieces are a little longer than the usual flash. I liked the stories fairly well. As with any collection of this type, there were some that I liked a lot, others less so, a couple not at all. I'd give a few of the individual stories 4 stars for sure, but never felt that any were 5-star amazing. Definitely worth a read if you like the form.
sheldonleecompton's review
5.0
I like that The Best Small Fictions 2015 is as important as Best American Short Stories 2015. It should be.
Who says it’s as important? I do.
I won’t go into the number of New Yorker and Atlantic stories that have populated the Best American Short Stories series for the past several decades. That would be almost as boring as reading most of those same stories.
Let’s be clear – the most exciting literature being written today is landing in the small literary journals, mostly online. The day of the 7,500-word suburban angst story has come and gone. That is if you enjoy reading engaging literature.
And if you enjoy engaging literature, there is no more important book published in 2015 than The Best Small Fictions 2015 from Queen’s Ferry Press and series editor Tara L. Masih.
This first annual anthology was guest edited by Robert Olen Butler, most well-known for his Pulitzer-prize winning A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain. However, I’ve been most impressed with Butler’s short fiction. Any guest editor who can write a book like Severance is certainly qualified.
Following a similar format as the Best American series, Best Small Fictions gives us fifty-four stories in full text and then names several finalist stories at the end of the book, citing the author’s name, story title, and journal in which the story was published.
I’m glad this is where the similarities end.
In Best Small Fictions, there are stories such as Anna Lea Jancewicz’s “Marriage” where the narrator likens marriage to combining ketchup from two half empty bottles to make one full bottle. Anyone who has worked in a small diner or gave every ounce they had to a relationship will find the comparison appropriate.
“When she was waiting tables, she used to marry the ketchup bottles. That’s what they called it, marrying.”
Jancewicz goes on to lay down her expertly drawn comparison, first published at Matchbook, ending with this beautiful moment:
“It’s not like there’s this third bottle. There’s the bottle with the least left to give, upended. And then that bottle is empty, the other gets it all.”
Such metaphors are only created with such power in fiction so compact.
Another trait running through many of the stories in this anthology are endings that realize that endings can be something other than ambiguous, as in the closing sentences of Catherine Moore’s story “Not About Liz.” Of course, there’s no way I’m going to share that ending with you here. As you should, buy the book and see how Moore can crush your heart in the final seconds of a story, without ambiguity, without mincing words. With total and absolute power.
And there’s stories in which so much can be said simply by implying the possibility of certain events as in Julia Strayer’s “Let’s Say,” first published at SmokeLong Quarterly.
“Let’s say I’m being robbed, but I choose to believe I’m pushing my daughter on the swings in the park across from the Methodist church, autumn leaves collecting on the grass as the wind blows, and with each push she becomes a year older until she’s my age, but she knows more than I do because that’s how kids are these days.”
The entire story is here, in this first long sentence. Strayer goes on to tell us a pitch-perfect story, but the reason it is pitch-perfect is because everything – everything – calls back to that opening sentence. It’s a trait that can be found in the best short fiction today, a skilled ability to open the heart wide without having to spend 7,500 words doing so.
Another aspect of the best contemporary fiction available to readers today can be found in the fine ability of the best writers to inject a sense of fabulism into their stories.
Sure, George Saunders is doing something close to this in the Big Stuffy publications, but Saunders himself would applaud a story like Dan Moreau’s “Dead Gary,” which at one point reveals to us the impossible in that wonderful way a great story can.
“He’d find it out on his own, we figured.”
Moreau’s story, originally appearing in Workers Write! More Tales from the Cubicle from Blue Cubicle Press, takes us to the well-worn tale of corporate worker bee spiritual and emotional death in a way completely fresh and original.
There’s so many good stories to enjoy in Best Small Fictions, but it’s the overall project that rings most important. This anthology says that stories are here to stay, stories are powerful, stories are magic.
Who says it’s as important? I do.
I won’t go into the number of New Yorker and Atlantic stories that have populated the Best American Short Stories series for the past several decades. That would be almost as boring as reading most of those same stories.
Let’s be clear – the most exciting literature being written today is landing in the small literary journals, mostly online. The day of the 7,500-word suburban angst story has come and gone. That is if you enjoy reading engaging literature.
And if you enjoy engaging literature, there is no more important book published in 2015 than The Best Small Fictions 2015 from Queen’s Ferry Press and series editor Tara L. Masih.
This first annual anthology was guest edited by Robert Olen Butler, most well-known for his Pulitzer-prize winning A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain. However, I’ve been most impressed with Butler’s short fiction. Any guest editor who can write a book like Severance is certainly qualified.
Following a similar format as the Best American series, Best Small Fictions gives us fifty-four stories in full text and then names several finalist stories at the end of the book, citing the author’s name, story title, and journal in which the story was published.
I’m glad this is where the similarities end.
In Best Small Fictions, there are stories such as Anna Lea Jancewicz’s “Marriage” where the narrator likens marriage to combining ketchup from two half empty bottles to make one full bottle. Anyone who has worked in a small diner or gave every ounce they had to a relationship will find the comparison appropriate.
“When she was waiting tables, she used to marry the ketchup bottles. That’s what they called it, marrying.”
Jancewicz goes on to lay down her expertly drawn comparison, first published at Matchbook, ending with this beautiful moment:
“It’s not like there’s this third bottle. There’s the bottle with the least left to give, upended. And then that bottle is empty, the other gets it all.”
Such metaphors are only created with such power in fiction so compact.
Another trait running through many of the stories in this anthology are endings that realize that endings can be something other than ambiguous, as in the closing sentences of Catherine Moore’s story “Not About Liz.” Of course, there’s no way I’m going to share that ending with you here. As you should, buy the book and see how Moore can crush your heart in the final seconds of a story, without ambiguity, without mincing words. With total and absolute power.
And there’s stories in which so much can be said simply by implying the possibility of certain events as in Julia Strayer’s “Let’s Say,” first published at SmokeLong Quarterly.
“Let’s say I’m being robbed, but I choose to believe I’m pushing my daughter on the swings in the park across from the Methodist church, autumn leaves collecting on the grass as the wind blows, and with each push she becomes a year older until she’s my age, but she knows more than I do because that’s how kids are these days.”
The entire story is here, in this first long sentence. Strayer goes on to tell us a pitch-perfect story, but the reason it is pitch-perfect is because everything – everything – calls back to that opening sentence. It’s a trait that can be found in the best short fiction today, a skilled ability to open the heart wide without having to spend 7,500 words doing so.
Another aspect of the best contemporary fiction available to readers today can be found in the fine ability of the best writers to inject a sense of fabulism into their stories.
Sure, George Saunders is doing something close to this in the Big Stuffy publications, but Saunders himself would applaud a story like Dan Moreau’s “Dead Gary,” which at one point reveals to us the impossible in that wonderful way a great story can.
“He’d find it out on his own, we figured.”
Moreau’s story, originally appearing in Workers Write! More Tales from the Cubicle from Blue Cubicle Press, takes us to the well-worn tale of corporate worker bee spiritual and emotional death in a way completely fresh and original.
There’s so many good stories to enjoy in Best Small Fictions, but it’s the overall project that rings most important. This anthology says that stories are here to stay, stories are powerful, stories are magic.
maebinnig's review
5.0
Micro-fiction (or "flash fiction") is its own kind of beast, just as difficult in its own way as the novel. Every word counts when a story is only a page long. Done poorly, it's flat and ineffectual. Fortunately, this is a showcase for the genre's standouts, and the stories in this anthology pull no punches.
With 50+ stories by an assortment of acclaimed writers, there's plenty of variety. That means there will probably be some that you don't love ("APOCRYPHAL" just left me scratching my head), but also plenty that make you gasp and re-read.
My favorites: Marriage; Pistols at Twenty Paces; The Boy and the Bear; It Will Never Be Deep Enough.
(I received this book for free through a Goodreads giveaway.)
With 50+ stories by an assortment of acclaimed writers, there's plenty of variety. That means there will probably be some that you don't love ("APOCRYPHAL" just left me scratching my head), but also plenty that make you gasp and re-read.
My favorites: Marriage; Pistols at Twenty Paces; The Boy and the Bear; It Will Never Be Deep Enough.
(I received this book for free through a Goodreads giveaway.)
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