Prague / photo credit: Pablo Sanchez

What is it about the European cultures, tucked like bats into their tiny cubbies, that seems so much more specific than our own? How do Belgium or Luxembourg achieve “culture” in little more space we might use to construct a Wal-Mart megastore? What is it about confinement that breeds a more tribal than national, identity? What are we doing when we sit down to read a collection of fiction culled from a continent? What to make of the contiguities of the stories, that seem at times to overlap the national boundaries so as to “say something about that place”? The very assemblage of stories is frustrating, and self-confounding. What you could comfortably say about “Europe” after a summer abroad and a few hostels in Prague sounds positively Mrs. Mortimer-ian after the reflexivity (On se voit) and pure strangeness of these narratives (?): even naming them calls for fresh punctuation and some superior method of notation, a more fertile subjunctive.

Olympic Rings in Berlin / photo credit: Will Palmer

How to avoid taking roll? Three collections of unrelated vignettes, present. Three stories tangent upon a famous person and his or her actions as reflected upon the world stage, present.

Zinedine Zidane, in a Camus-worthy cameo penned by Bruxellois Jean-Philippe Toussaint, is gripped by nausea as he feels his presence–in the existential sense–at Berlin’s Olympic Stadium on July 9, 2006. Toussaint, a cinematographer as well as an author, cites Freud among his influences, but it is a stunt double of Camus’s “dark wind” that seems to draw Zidane from the future that has become the present, and to the absurd act that will become immortal: the headbutt to Marco Materazzi’s chest. Like Meursault, ennui and pure fatigue lead him to the “unscripted action,” the endpoint that his entire career has determined for him. Everyone and no one has seen the action: there is only the “Italian player” on the ground, and Zidane’s own head, forever covering half the distance to his opponent’s chest, without ever arriving. What better characterization of the action shots, the contortions of perpetrator and victim immortalized on Google? How much of what we claim to know is based on circumstantial evidence about what we’ve missed?

Suspended almost dead center of the volume, Giedra Radvilavičiūtė lays out a handful of answers in her five criteria for evaluating texts. In a collection like this, the gesture is reminiscent of a primary-school exercise book: tear out this ruler, and use it to solve the problems on the other pages. The tenets–in short, memorability, connection to lived experience, immersibility for the reader, revelation of the banal, and the impossibility of formulating any assertion without doubt–hover over the rest of the stories, inducing the reader to flip back, like a dutiful student to the endnotes, even after moving on to a new region. Connection to lived experience? Check. Revelation of the banal? Half a check. Immersibility? Perhaps not; here we are, flipping around, taking measure.

Back to the roll call for a moment. (What is about this collection that calls forth the spirit of the schoolroom? Do we, with an anthology, become students again? Do we read it because we assume it’s good for us, because there is some moral good in having read it, in the plus-que-parfait, like “the classics” our Brit-Lit teachers upheld?) A pair of stories about futuristic death-obsessed bureaucracies, present. Now this is the sort of gritty, dubbed stuff we expect to tune into when we delve into the European humanities scene. Flamand Peter Terrin tracks pro-/ant-agonist Ferdinand, noir-style, through his unauthorized murder of a loud and boorish neighbor. Haunted by some indistinct memories that he may have already drilled through more than his allotted share of murders (two per citizen, thanks), Ferdinand has some “Tell-Tale Heart”-ish moments as he attempts to sneak out of his victim’s house. His reasoning, though, about his neighbors, about others in general, is purely modern: “They’d rather see me dead than alive.” We all sort of feel this way about each other, in a way, which makes the two-murder ration seem at once gratuitous and not quite enough. If “L’enfer, c’est les autres,” then “le ciel, c’est la solitude.” It is in this solitary utopia that Ferdinand lurks farther and farther afield, into les quartiers difficiles, waiting for the sound of the punitive shot, knowing that the actual bullet to the brain will have preceded it. It’s a dim and sardonic story, one where you wonder more about what it’s like to off someone than get off with them, and where the two-murder-per-person method of population control is considered kinder than asking people to cut back on their childbearing.

Over in futuristic Bulgaria, Georgi Gospodinov reports on the anesthetic–literally, flowers no longer have scents and the sky gapes at the seams like an old baseball–conditions that follow our depredations upon genetics and the ozone layer. Castor P., an elderly astronomer who still remembers real bees and who, way back in 2011, discovered the universe’s smallest black hole, is about to sign over the last several decades of his allotted twelve and a half. He’s only waiting for the arrival of his son, on some other star; the silent recipient of his brief telegrams. As he waits, Castor arrives at the conclusion that loneliness has become the only organic substance, having escaped from its container like a gas and filling the vacuum where air used to be. His son never does arrive, and Castor is extinguished, mortal as his namesake. We’re left to wonder: who is his twin? Is the reader meant to be his double? There’s an Oedipal universality to this narrative: we can picture our old fathers, in their felt shirts, sending us voice mails and shakily lettered cards from our old ZIP codes. We only respond ceremonially, when we have to go back because they are sick, or dying or, finally, when we have to sort through their crumbled old papers and photographs of a world where they were at ease. He’s touching, this untwinned Geminorum, because he doesn’t want to make a fuss; he doesn’t tear up in front of the young woman clerking at the death office, still hoping his son will take a shining to her when he gets there.

Not everyone is so moving: in the other corners of Europe, a john runs off from a bust in a public pay toilet, leaving his homeless young servicer unpaid and beaten by cops; children kill a dolphin in a salt-water novelty tank during a dinner party, and the adults laugh it off; a girl rejects a boy during a secluded picnic and makes him drive her back to town; and a couple, lost on an idyllic bike ride, tie their dog to a tree and abandon it just before the husband proclaims his affair with his wife’s half-sister. But what’s the difference, anyway? In the first collection of vignettes, Austrian Antonio Fian’s narrator confesses to an eerily similar act with a friend of his wife’s sister who, surreally, turns out to be his wife–and every other woman in the world–after all. “So, all the women in the world know about us?” asks the adulterer, unsettled. They might as well–as in Gregory Corso’s poem, “Marriage,” we’re all alike–”All streaming into the same cozy hotels/All going to do the same thing tonight.” The only rebellion we might possibly enjoy is to remove ourselves from the honeymoon suite altogether: “Stay up all night! Stare that hotel clerk in the eye!” Sexuality, so fascinating and individual to the self is, in reality, one of our most banal habits.

Another of humanity’s more banal projects, pop culture, finds an apt definition in Victor Pelevin’s description of “the merely comfortable selling the poor fantasies about the lives of the rich, the very rich, and the fabulously rich.” One immediately visualizes the same photos duplicated and recaptioned in the high-budget celebrity mags down to the press-release reprints in the low: if magazine layout was still analog, these images would be peeled bare by masking tape. From Professor Potashinsky, pioneering theorist of “Friedmann Space,” we learn that there is a whole field of quantum mechanics specific to wealth; apparently, the wealth-traveler, or “lucrenaut” (take that, Laika) ceases to perceive time and cannot recall any lucreventures if he or she is once again separated from the critical mass of wealth. Not for lack of trying, though–lucrenauts live it up, eating and drinking and–here is Pelevin’s most brilliant line, at least in translation–”transferring their genetic material to gentle creatures who sold themselves so expensively that the transactions already resembled love.” At the end of the experiment, the brain images of the lucrenauts’ perceptions during these brave ventures are uniform: a green corridor. The proletariat struggle, the rise and fall of communism, the corruption and trafficking, and drug-cartel stabbings for wealth, and what does it feel like? A waiting room in a third-rate clinic.

It would be a Short-Story-210, too-clever-by-half reader who would state that the motifs of overmanaged, generic nation-states and transactional, interchangeable relationships–and the substitution of celebrity gossip for village tongue-wagging–directly correspond to anxieties about the European Union and any amalgamating tendencies it might have on the cultures within its borders. Without putting words in anyone’s mouth, it’s fair to assume that no one wants the mother country to turn into the Epcot version of itself: a souvenir stand with a few snack specialties–extra points for chocolate, fried stuff in cones, and sausage. It’s limiting, though, not to mention a little boring, to read literature symptomatically, and we’re often so immersed in our era that we tend to overdesignate themes as specific to our own time. Reading with an inflection is one thing; “getting the news through poems,” or short stories, for that matter, is another.

Europe isn’t the only continent where people are overwhelmed by market psychology and looking around at each other to define themselves. The laments that nothing is genuine anymore, that style is winning over substance, that there’s nothing original left to do or say, are almost as old as recorded history–or, cynics might say, as old people themselves. Somehow, there have been new utterances and new pastimes and, much as the new is always indebted to its antecedents, the breath hasn’t been entirely snatched from us yet. In fact, if anything, there’s a little too much breath–together with text and bandwith and airtime and any of the other major transmitters. Of course, surplus doesn’t equal substance, and language doesn’t equal an utterance. We’re watching the same shows, in different languages: celebrities are whittling their faces and bodies down to the same androgyn; music is so produced it’s hard to name the instrument; and food–at least the affordable, available stuff–is so processed you can’t name the food animal or the preservative. The vacuum-inflating loneliness and ersatz bees may not be far behind.

Further Reading and Links

Aleksandar Hemon

- In this interview, World Books talks to series editor Aleksandar Hemon about the challenges of promoting first-rate European fiction to American readers.

- Here on Fiction Writers Review, read a review of Hemon’s most recent story collection, Love and Obstacles.

- Read interviews with some of the anthology’s contributors: The Quarterly Conversation talks to Jean-Philippe Toussaint; Dalkey Archive Press talks to Georgi Gospodinov (Bulgaria), to Antonio Fian (Austria), to Peter Stamm (Switzerland), to Naja Marie Aidt (Denmark), and to many others.

- Via BookBrowse, read an excerpt from Best European Fiction’s preface (by Zadie Smith).

- If you’re shopping for a copy of this book, support indie bookstores by ordering it from Powell’s.

What we received often transcended mere lists; writers shared why these certain books affected them, woke them up, even made them jealous. So in addition to the “favorites” that received the most votes, we’ve also included some of these endorsements and mini-reviews. Most selections are arranged by genre (Novel, Story Collection, etc.), and then there are less conventional categories–like Book You Loved But Would Be Embarrassed to Be Caught Reading.

Which books did you fall in love with last year? Which were delicious flings and which, life-long companions? Comment and let us know!

Novels We Loved

Sag Harbor was one of our contributors’ favorite novels. In her FWR review, Natalie Bakopoulos writes:

Sag Harbor is driven not by plot but by time, by the fleetingness of summer and its constant reminder of that fleetingness. The beginning is slow, with the sense of months ahead, time to digress and ponder and imagine and internalize, with the thickest, most dense prose socked in the middle of July, the more desperate, urgent bursts as we careen toward Labor Day. The writing is wonderfully languorous throughout, like summer itself, and a perfect match for adolescence: unrestrained and indulgent but wonderfully self-conscious as well.

When Jeremiah Chamberlin talked with Colson Whitehead at the Ann Arbor Book Festival, he asked how the process of writing this more autobiographical book compared to that of his previous novels. Whitehead responded:

When the writing slowed down it was because I was trying to figure out what I remembered from being a teenager, or what I had discovered about the time period and the community that would work in the story. In previous books I had a lot more free reign to invent stuff. Some of them take place in very fantastic stages or there’s a kind of heightened reality. So I had to figure out how to play it straight and stick to the facts and make the facts useful in the story.

Another novel at the top of our lists was Nami Mun’s debut, Miles From Nowhere, which was short listed for the Orange Prize for New Writers. Her novel-in-stories follows Joon, a runaway teen living on the streets of the Bronx in the 1980s. Mun captures both the vulnerability and the toughness of this character–to say nothing of her ingenuity–with remarkable grace and compassion. When Greg Schutz interviewed the author, she discussed the relationship between Joon’s life and her own:

Considering that I also left home for good at an early age, and that I’ve held some of the jobs Joon does in the book, I think it’s very fair for readers to wonder if the book is autobiographical. Emotionally speaking, the book definitely expresses some of the feelings I have felt in my life, but the actual scenes, dialogue, events, etc. portrayed in the book are very much fiction. To put it in numbers, 99% of Miles from Nowhere is pure fabrication. The remaining one percent represents what I think of as kernels of real life that provided the spark for that 99%.

Elizabeth Ames Staudt’s passionate recommendation of Everything Matters! by Ron Currie, Jr. (Viking) makes me want to pick up a copy:

Not since Season One of The Wire has anything fictional caused me to weep so desperately. This novel takes some risks structurally, and it kept going places that, in the hands of a lesser writer, could have been danger zones. But Ron Currie Jr. breaks the readers’ hearts in the best way a book can–by making us want to suck the marrow (and blood and muscle and vaporous stuff that must be soul) out of every last minute we have during our too-short time on earth.

Why did our contributors rave about Padgett Powell’s The Interrogative Mood? Can you really write a successful novel composed entirely of questions? Isn’t that a gimmick?

Valerie Laken, author of Dream House, says that in this case, it works. If you’d like to hear an excerpt, here’s a YouTube video of Powell reading from the book; to learn more about it, readthis “Briefly Noted” review from The New Yorker.

Laken’s own book was a standout this year, and a top pick of our Contributors. Though already an acclaimed writer of short fiction, Dream House is her first novel. She spoke with FWR’s Peggy Adler last spring about the process of moving from the short form to that of the novel, saying:

I agree with your comment that writing a good short story requires a very exacting degree of skill, whereas novels can have a few flaws and still be widely loved. I don’t think people expect perfection from a novel as they do from a short story. I can wince and squirm over a single line when I read a story, but in a novel, when I encounter a bum line, even a bum paragraph or chapter, I often just shrug and keep reading onward.

On the other hand, writing a novel requires so much more stamina and faith than a story. It’s a little like those people who get in their sailboats and sail to a far-off island, just for the adventure of it. I always think they’re insane, because the idea terrifies me: what if you get lost out there all on your own, and no one knows how to find you? Most of writing a novel feels like that kind of middle-of-nowhere, you’re-on-your-own sort of journey. And there are so many days when you wake up in the middle of the ocean with no wind in sight and think, “Why the hell did I sign on for this”

Few books were more eagerly anticipated this year than Lorrie Moore’s A Gate at the Stairs . And the wait was worth it for many Moore fans, myself among them. I love Lorrie Moore unconditionally, like a dumbstruck teen, and A Gate at the Stairs (her most novel-ish novel yet) reaffirms and renews that love. In this coming of age story, college student Tassie takes a part-time nanny job for a white couple on the cusp of adopting a mixed-race baby. Rather quickly, Tassie learns about the world beyond the small farm where she grew up. As she forms a loving attachment to her little charge, she’s also faced with an onslaught of big issues — from racism and terrorism to the darker sides of marriage, family, sex, loyalty–as well as life’s smaller mysteries: she uses her roommate’s dildo to stir her chocolate milk. Here is some of the finest yet of Moore’s brutal, gorgeous, pun-soaked prose that creates tension between witty satire and real human connection. This novel is not tidy or well-structured, and there is one subplot that, were I lucky enough to be her editor, I’d have urged her to abandon…but the story at this book’s center is amazing, as are its main character and voice–so the book as a whole is no less than amazing, too.

A debut novel worth proclaiming our love to is Sima’s Undergarments for Women, by Ilana Stanger-Ross (Overlook). Several FWR contributors (myself among them) enjoyed discussing this book last year, off-site–and here’s an excerpt from Lee Thomas’s forthcoming review:

Many reviewers of this debut novel by Ilana Stanger-Ross note the sensitivity and care she uses to describe Sima Goldner’s small basement lingerie shop: the neighborhood gossip, the constant trips up and down a stepladder, the dressing room sessions that are equal parts therapy and the quest for the perfect fit. Stanger-Ross definitely has an eye for detail, and an ear for humor in conversation. Sima and her husband Lev, both in shuffling middle age, have long since grown used to the disappointment of not being able to have children. In the Jewish neighborhood of Boro Park in Brooklyn, being childless has cast a shroud of tragedy upon them. Sima withdraws into the world of her shop. These details provide the backdrop, the story begins when a vivacious young Israeli woman, Timna, enters Sima’s shop one August day and changes everything. The book begins with the magic of Sima falling in love. Stanger-Ross conceives her lonely seamstress masterfully and completely, down to the embarrassment Sima feels when caught staring at Timna’s perfect breasts. As Sima’s obsession with Timna’s lively presence in her life grows, so does the pathos of her longing. A rekindled yearning for motherhood carries Sima through emotions akin to romantic love: fascination, passion, jealousy and revelation.

After the literary and cinematic success of What Was She Thinking? Notes on a Scandal, Zoe Heller had big shoes to fill: her own. And our contributors say she’s done so with aplomb. Concluding her June review of The Believers , Lee Thomas writes:

Among many things, The Believers is a meditation on a marriage facing the fact of mortality and the legacy of a larger-than-life man. In a book full of conflicted personalities, Audrey epitomizes a woman of such force that other characters continually underestimate her. They miscalculate her selfishness and cunning, certainly, but also her capacity to change and surprise. For Zoë Heller there are no simple villains: no one in The Believers could be mistaken for a hero, but her characters prove incredibly seductive. Along the way one becomes mesmerized by the story, enthralled by the Litvinoffs as much as these family members are with themselves.

We’d also like to give a nod to the terrific debut novel Everything Asian by Sung Woo. In his introduction to an interview with the author, Jeremiah Chamberlin writes:

Though modeled in part on the author’s own life, Everything Asian is more than just a coming-of-age tale or an immigrant narrative. It is also the portrait of a particular community and the odd intersections that take place between people who work in close proximity to one another but don’t always know each other very well. Captured with humor and generosity, the book chronicles one year in the lives of the Kim family as they adjust to a new life in the United States and interact with fellow shopkeepers at Peddlers Town.

You can read the entire interview with Sung here.

Novel We Loved (Again!) When It Came Out in Paperback

Originally published in the fall of 2008, Hannah Tinti’s The Good Thief’s paperback edition continues to enthrall our contributors. Charlotte Boulay reviewed the book in 2008; here’s an excerpt:

Even as Tinti’s details and characters make the novel completely her own, the author also retells a classic story, that of the resourceful orphan boy; I marvel at how effortlessly, even in that somewhat glutted field, she carries it off. Reviews have compared Tinti to J.K. Rowling, and perhaps in terms of sales this is a good thing for any author, but this is not Rowling (who I also love)—Tinti’s writing is both more emotionally complex and scarier. Unlike the characters in Harry Potter books, the friends and possible authority figures who surround Ren are deeply troubled, unreliable, and needy. They are, in other words, real people. And although saints can raise boys from the dead, Ren always has the stump of his hand to remind him that violence is present.

Fans of The Good Thief, give your Valentine a great last-minute gift: a subscription to One Story, the acclaimed non-profit lit mag that Tinti co-founded and continues to edit. (For yourself, order a copy of issue #86: Celeste Ng’s wonderful story “What Passes Over.”)

Story Collections We Loved

Speaking of short stories…this collection seemed to be on everyone’s list: no book received more votes–regardless of category–than Wells Tower’s Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned. In the opening line of his review of this collection, Brian Short writes, “The first things you feel are joy and awe.” And though that opinion darkens slightly for our reviewer by book’s end, “powerful” seems an unequivocal adjective to describe this voice and these stories.

Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned is currently a finalist for the 2010 Story Prize. The other contenders for this prestigious honor were also written by debut authors: In Other Rooms, Other Wonders (Daniyal Mueenuddin, Norton) and Drift (Victoria Patterson, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). The winner will be announced on March 3.

Another all-around favorite from last year was Allison Amend’s stunning collection Things That Pass for Love. Whether mentioned in blog posts (I’m still kvelling after seeing her read last January) or cited by other authors in their interviews, this book was clearly a house favorite. When Celeste Ng spoke with the author in October, Amend described her story-writing process:

I’m almost never sure where the story is headed, and it’s not until I write the last sentence that I realize it’s the last. I would worry that if I knew where the story was going, the prose would be too serving of that purpose. I do, however, sometimes know what plot points I want to happen, or what themes I want to explore, but I never know the ending of a story.

Stories for me are born from an amalgamation of snippets of observations that finally come together in a way that’s meaningful for all of them (or not—I have a folder of stories that… frankly… suck). One story in the collection came from my application of tingly chapstick, and wondering: if I kissed someone, would they feel the tingly-ness? The scene eventually got cut from the story, but it was a point of entry. Other times I start with a sketched plot: what would happen if someone’s dog fell in love with a different owner? Who would the original owner be, and what would that mean for him/her?

Elizabeth Ames Staudt highly recommends Girl Trouble , by Holly Goddard Jones:

I’ve been anxious for more from Holly Goddard Jones’ since reading her marvelous short story “Life Expectancy” in The Kenyon Review two years ago. Girl Trouble was every bit as wonderful as I’d hoped it would be–so good, in fact, that I still haven’t read one of the stories. Sounds weird, I know, but I was one of those kids that made my Halloween candy last until Easter. Come out with another book, Ms. Goddard Jones!

Maile Meloy’s newest book of stories, Both Ways is the Only Way I Want it, was selected as one of The New York Times Book Review’s Top Ten Books of 2009. It was a favorite of ours, too. In the closing of her December review of this collection, Celeste Ng writes the following:

Amy Hempel once described a story as “when two equally appealing forces, or characters, or ideas try to occupy the same place at the same time, and they’re both right.” That definition applies perfectly to Both Ways. There are no clear lines here, no obvious right answers. Meloy’s characters are caught between two choices that are both right—or both wrong—and that’s what makes their decisions so difficult, and makes these stories so compelling. In reading them, you feel, as Meloy puts it, “both the threat of disorder and the steady, thrumming promise of having everything [you] wanted, all at once.”

For more on Maile Meloy’s work, read Joshua Bodwell’s December interview with the author.

One of my personal favorites of 2009, Delicate Edible Birds by Lauren Groff, was also a popular pick among our writers.Each of these stories condenses the depth and scope of an epic novel into fifty or fewer pages. Groff’s characters are vivid and sympathetic, her stories romantic, her plots gripping. Delicate’s most powerful tale, “L. DeBard and Aliette,” chronicles a passionate love affair between a retired professional swimmer-turned-poet and the young, wealthy teenager with polio whose father hires him to give her swimming lessons. Spanning decades, their story is both buoyed by hope and tugged down by despair; its ending feels as unexpected as it is inevitable. Another story, “Blythe,” follows the complicated friendship between two women who meet in a poetry night class. Groff captures astutely the fluctuations of that particular dynamic of fierce, feral love shared between female friends when one is a luminous (if also dangerous and severely depressed) star and the other adopts the reluctant–even resentful–role of yes-woman/caretaker. Throughout, the prose is rich but always precise. Groff never inundates readers with too many images or adds one for the sake of mere atmosphere. The tension between her characters’ sly sense of humor and the dark situations they must navigate makes them truly flesh-and-blood, able – as people must – to find joy or at least irony in seemingly joyless scenarios. And this makes their destinies matter all the more to us.

Joshua Bodwell recommends 2009’s Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award winner, Love Begins in Winter by Simon Van Booy:

Stumbling upon this collection and writer was, hands down, my “big discovery” of the year. I completely lucked into hearing Simon read in New Hampshire back in late June. His work knocked me out of my chair. He was also just a completely charming guy. I bought and devoured this collection…then I re-read it to savor the lyrical prose. By October, I’d arranged to host Simon for his first trip to and reading in Maine.

Several contributors recommended Alice Munro’s newest collection, Too Much Happiness. Contributor Mary Westbrook writes:

I just finished Too Much Happiness. Maybe not her “best” work, but I do like how weird Munro has gotten. That’s not a very “literary” way to describe her work, but that’s how I feel. Her stories are  wild. Though I had read several of the stories in the collection before its publication (in the New Yorker and Best Of series), I was compelled and surprised by the randomness — or seeming randomness — of violence in the collection, particularly in its first half. The gloves come off right away, so to speak. I think this collection taps into some collective anxiety lurking in the air, without sacrificing storytelling.

Even before Tunneling to the Center of the Earth hit the shelves and was an Andrew’s Book Club pick, many FWR contributors were excited to read it. The stories in this collection have appeared previously in such places as The Cincinnati Review, One Story, Ploughshares, The Greensboro Review, and Meridian. The title story and “The Choir Director Affair” were also anthologized in the 2006 and 2005 editions of New Stories of the South, respectively. And the collection did not disappoint.

Here is a preview from Brian Short’s forthcoming review, which will be published by FWR later this month:

Kevin Wilson, who also helps to run the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, has put together a strong and surprising collection of deceptively odd stories. We encounter an old woman who works as a substitute grandmother for children whose real grandmothers have died, or gone senile, or have had a falling out with the real parents. We follow a young man who, in addition to working in a Scrabble factory—trolling all day through hills of letters to find those he has been assigned—also might have a genetic predisposition to spontaneous human combustion. There is a second-person story, and another in the form a handbook or lexicon. Clearly, Wilson is interested in the formal possibilities of the short story. But unlike many authors with similar interests, Wilson never abandons the very human and often shockingly tender hearts of his stories or their characters.

Another debut collection (and Andrew’s Book Club selection) we couldn’t wait to read was What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us. We’ve read Laura Van Den Berg’s stories in One Story, American Short Fiction, and the Baltimore Review, and her work has been anthologized in Best American Non-Required Reading 2008, Best New American Voices 2010, and The Puschcart Prize XXXIIV. Here’s an excerpt from Liana Imam’s forthcoming review of this collection:

Two books in 2009 made me cry: Lorrie Moore’s new novel and this collection. The stories here–about women who are lonely and, at times, want to be lonely, and who don’t want to live a life of drinks and goings out with people–are chasing the tails of the same legends as their characters: Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, and contentment. And these stories were saddest because these characters always almost had what they wanted; they just wouldn’t reach all the way for it.

Anthologies We Loved

Each year, a bookshelf’s worth of “Best of” anthologies are published, but one of our favorites is Dzanc’s Best of the Web series. We were fans long before Christine Hartzler’s essay “Games Are Not About Monsters” was selected for inclusion in next year’s collection. Honest. Here’s what Jeremiah Chamberlin had to say about Best of the Web 2009 last August:

Each summer Dzanc Books releases The Best of the Web, an annual anthology of the year’s best poetry, fiction, and nonfiction that was published online. Of all the “Best of” collections that come out each year, this anthology, with its multi-genre interests, probably has the most in common with The Best American Non-Required Reading series. And like that anthology, this one also shares an interest in work that is driven by voice, that isn’t afraid to test the limits of its form.

Another collection that impressed our contributors was Rasskazy: New Fiction from a New Russia (Tin House, 2009), edited by Mikhail Iossel and Jeff Parker. T.M. De Vos reviewed the book for FWR:

Life in Russia, said author Aleksander Snegirev at Housing Works’ September 21 Rasskazy event, is uncomfortable, but always interesting.

So, too, are the stories in this plump new anthology: Arkady Babchenko’s beleaguered soldier returns to Chechnya a page away from German Sadulaev’s lyrical descriptions of Chechnya’s devastated countryside. The binding is a veritable trench, across which both narrators peek at each other warily.

One of the most innovative anthologies last year was We Are the Friction: Illustration vs. Short Fiction, edited by Jez Burrows and Lizzy Stewart, who together form Sing Statistics. This project paired twelve illustrators with twelve short fiction writers from around the globe: each artist created a piece of work inspired by an author’s story, while each author penned fiction based on an artist’s illustration. In her review of the collection, Lee Thomas wrote:

The collection’s numerous jumping off points reminded me of the Creative Commons ethos, or collaborative innovators like Jonathan Lethem and his Promiscuous Materials project. We Are the Friction invites a third collaborator into the mix: the reader. The stories and illustrations provide a beautifully executed sketch of an idea, a mood, a relationship that leaves the reader imagining the periphery of the story, what comes before, what after. Some work better than others, but that, I suspect, is a function of individual taste and would be entirely different for another set of eyes.

The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction , edited by Tara L. Masih, is a collection of 25 brief essays on the form, written by such authors as Robert Olen Butler, Ron Carlson, Stuart Dybek, Pamela Painter, and Jayne Anne Philips. In her FWR review, Sophie Powell writes:

As a creative writing professor at Boston College, I frequently use collections of flash fiction, stories which usually run 1,000 words or less. Given time limitations and the varying writing experience of my students, these versatile, word-limited pieces are a very approachable and satisfying form to work within. However, I always find myself floundering about when I try to explain and define this genre for the first time. As Pamelyn Casto, one of the thought-provoking, inspiring contributors, puts it: “Flash fiction is difficult if not impossible to define – and should be allowed to remain so – because this type of writing is protean… it takes on various shapes and uses different strategies to achieve its goals.” This is why this collection is so successful, and so essential, to anyone in the field of short fiction who teaches, writes, and is interested in its history and practice. These essays are probing and explorative rather than reductive and constrictive. A true ‘field guide’ in spirit, I came away thoroughly more equipped to teach and write short fiction in a richer, more illuminating way.

Mysteries We Loved

In 2009, many writers enjoyed The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson, the second book in the author’s Millennium triology. The third installment, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest, has just been released. Charlotte warns that “anyone who underestimates this mystery/thriller series does a disservice to themselves.” (Read Lee Goldberg’s review of the first book in the series, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo)

Young Adult Novels We Loved

The contributors who recommend The King of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner urge readers to start from the beginning of this series with The Thief. Here’s an excerpt from Charlotte Boulay’s upcoming review of this YA novel:

…of all the books I’ve read in recent memory, not many compare to this series, which is serial narrative of the best kind—the kind that gets richer and more complex as it develops. There are three novels presently published: The Thief, The Queen of Attolia, and The King of Attolia. A fourth, A Conspiracy of Kings, comes out in late March. I can’t wait. [...] [A]mong YA fantasy novels, The Thief is exceptional because it’s a story about adults. These are not the sudden inheritors of magical powers, but people who have carried the weight of responsibility for their entire lives. Although I love the tradition in YA novels of getting rid of the parents early on so the young protagonists can transgress and transform, it’s also refreshing to break that mold.

- In The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, what was once North America is now Panem, a dystopic society where twelve impoverished districts are forced to pay their dues to the rich capitol that quashed their rebellion, and the price is awful: every year, each district must send one girl and one boy to compete in the culmination of reality television’s horrors, the Hunger Games, where children must fight to the death until only one remains. Collins delivers an inventive, suspenseful story that raises important questions about timeless and timely issues. And I was thrilled to find that the novel’s central character, 16-year-old Katniss, is brave, strong, and clever: finally, a girl that readers of both genders will be able to identify with and admire! This book is the first in a trilogy; the second book published a few months ago, and the third is due to publish later this year.

A Memoir We Loved

Helen W. Mallon recommends The Locust and the Bird by Hanan al-Shaykh:

I love the voice al Shaykh creates–though this is a first person memoir, it’s in her mother’s voice and not her own. Yet the warmth, passion, and power she evokes is intimate, like the lingering perfume of a friend who’s just left after sharing tea for the afternoon. In the prologue, Lebanese-born novelist and journalist al-Shaykh writes that her mother, Kamila, respected Hanan’s career while openly scorning its limitations. On a balcony during one of al-Shaykh’s visits home, Kamila declared: “(The politically active women you write about) were privileged. Maybe nobody encouraged them, but at least they weren’t oppressed. But what about the women who are treated as less than human because they are female?…Perhaps you are not curious to know about my childhood, and why I left you?” What daughter could tolerate hearing such a story? What daughter could resist? Al-Shaykh gave Kamila a first-person voice in The Locust and the Bird, stepping aside so that her mother, unable to read or write, “wrote this book,” revealing how she “transformed her lies into a lifetime of naked honesty.”

Poetry Collections We Loved

All-American Poem by Matthew Dickman

End of the West by Michael Dickman

The Dickman twins were 2009’s Poet Celebrities…and while the media lusted after their family resemblance, we at FWR loved how mindblowingly grand and unique (from the other) each poet’s work was. Reading the books together is an experiment we recommend. Also? It’s kickass that we even HAVE poet celebrities in 21st century.

It may be from 2008, but several contributors insisted that we recommend Corinna A’Maying the Apocalypse by Darcie Dennigan.

Book You Loved But Would be Embarrassed to be Caught Reading

Paperback copies of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, flew off the shelves in 2009. Even writers, we snobbish creatures who blush to be reading what everyone else is, are buying — and loving — this bestselling novel, nominated by several writers for this category. One anonymous contributor writes:

It’s just so, so popular. Every bookclubber has read, discussed, and gifted it at this point. But with good reason. Masses, you have good taste!”

Best Book with The Worst Cover (Don’t Judge it)

Hand of Isis by Jo Graham

Most Satisfying Book for Your Inner Nerd

How I Become A Famous Novelist by Steve Hely. Read Richard Parks’s review.

Most Satisfying Book for Your Outer Nerd

Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms by Ethan Gilsdorf. You can read Sophie Powell’s review of the book here.

What You Plan to Give Your Spouse So You Can Read It

The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet, by Reif Larsen. This inventive, beautifully illustrated novel about cartography is a Staff’s Pick at Powells.com; read why.

Book You Haven’t Read Yet But Are Dying To

Changing My Mind by Zadie Smith. Elizabeth explains why:

In “Read Better,” her 2007 essay in the Guardian, Zadie Smith writes, “I have said that when I open a book I feel the shape of another human being’s brain.” The shape of Zadie Smith’s own brain feels marvelous, as lovely and winding as the cover of her new collection, Changing My Mind, which I cannot wait to get my hands on.

More Books We’d Send Roses and Chocolates To

- The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

- Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon

- The Spare Room by Helen Garner

- The Program Era by Mark McGurl (Read Mary Stewart Atwell’s interview with the author here.)

- Lowboy by John Wray

- How to Leave Hialeah by Jennine Capó Crucet

- Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer

- Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

- Marielitos, Balseros and Other Exiles by Cecilia Rodríguez Milanés

- Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

- The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

- The Magicians by Lev Grossman

Many thanks to Associate Editor Jeremiah Chamberlin for helping both to compile results and to create this feature.

And for a list of categories so awesome it needed a post of its own, check out Brian Bartels’s own Valentine to 2009’s books on the FWR blog.

NYC-based writers, head to Brooklyn’s newest bookstore, Fort Greene’s Greenlight Books (686 Fulton St., at S. Portland), tonight (Monday, November 23) at 7:30 PM for a special event featuring local authors and the editor of Mentors, Muses, and Monsters, a book that we at FWR are excited to read.

This is also the bookstore’s first installment of what promises to be an exciting series of events featuring both authors and lit bloggers.

On a personal note, I’m thrilled at Greenlight’s birth, if a bit heartsick that I had to leave Fort Greene about a month before it opened; when I head back to the east coast for the holidays, I will make a pilgrimage.

But for those of you lucky enough to live a short train ride or jaunt away, here’s the skinny (via Greenlight’s newsletter):

Mentors, Muses & Monsters: 30 Writers on the People Who Changed Their Lives (The Free Press)
Featuring editor Elizabeth Benedict
With contributors Alexander Chee, Mary Gordon, Martha Southgate, and Lily Tuck
Hosted by Beatrice.com’s Ron Hogan

A cavalcade of local authors kicks off our new series of Blogger/Author Pairings, in which a literary blogger hosts a real-world reading.

Pioneering blogger Ron Hogan, creator of Beatrice and book industry journalist for GalleyCat, hosts this event for a new anthology exploring the varied relationships of writers with those who have influenced them, for better or worse.

The book’s editor Elizabeth Benedict (author of The Practice of Deceit and others) will discuss the project of Mentors, Muses & Monsters, and her own relationship with Elizabeth Hardwick.

Alexander Chee (author of Edinburgh) will read from his essay on taking a class with Annie Dillard.

Mary Gordon (author most recently of Reading Jesus) will talk about her two Barnard mentors, Elizabeth Hardwick and Janice Thaddeus.

Martha Southgate (author of Third Girl from the Left) reads from her piece on an influential book, Harriet the Spy.

And Lily Tuck (National Book Award winning author of The News from Paraguay) talks about the influence of Gordon Lish on her own work.

Join us for a lively conversation about influence, identity, and the writing life.

You can RSVP on Facebook for this event; RSVPs are appreciated (to help us get an idea of attendance), but NOT required, and seating is first come, first served.

And if you can’t make the event but still want a signed copy…

We want to make sure every reader has a chance to enter the fascinating and ongoing conversation between generations of writers by reading the fabulous essays in Mentors, Muses & Monsters, whether or not they attend Monday’s event. If you can’t make it and you’d like a signed copy of the anthology (or any of the other titles by these authors), just send an email to info@greenlightbookstore.com indicating the books you’d like, any particular inscription, and the best way to reach you. We’ll have the books signed and hold or ship them to you as you prefer.

Despite these problems, Rachel Kramer Bussel’s Best Sex Writing series has become a yearly fixture at my house. With her personal take on the best of sex journalism from 2009 (or, rather, 2008; the title is a bit of a misnomer), Kramer Bussel notes that “You don’t have to look far to find sex, but you do have to get a bit bolder when looking for writing and thinking about sex that doesn’t play to the lowest common denominator.” I would absolutely agree with this statement, even though I always find myself wondering why she hasn’t yet published anything from my own sex news and views website.

Best Sex Writing editor Rachel Kramer Bussel / photo from East Bay Literary Examiner

The best article in the collection is without a doubt Mary Roach’s “The Immaculate Orgasm: Who Needs Genitals?” Roach, the author of Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, is great at bringing scientific exploration on sexual subjects to the public in a thorough yet light-hearted manner. This particular piece focuses on the science behind orgasm, which isn’t quite as straightforward as one might imagine. Indeed, the piece explains how people who have experienced spinal cord injuries can still achieve orgasm—which, in turn, allows scientists to develop a clearer definition of orgasms more generally. Roach interviews and shadows professor Marcalee Sipski, who presents the concept of “nongenital orgasms,” which can occur in before epileptic seizures, in dreams, or even as “thought orgasms.” The piece is in-depth, wide-ranging, entertaining and educational, and absolutely meets my own criteria for the best in sexual reporting.

Honorable mentions include “Sex Offenders!!” by Kelly Davis, “Is Cybersex Cheating?” by Violet Blue, and the short but sweet “Silver-Balling” by Stacey D’Erasmo, where even the most profligate lovers are confounded by the name of an unfamiliar sexual act.

EDIT 5-5-09: This review has now also been published in Black Heart Magazine.

Further Resources

- For the Huffington Post, Rachel Kramer Bussel writes about “The Media’s Sexual Irresponsibility” and talks to writer Susannah Breslin about Eliot Spitzer and prostitution.

- The East Bay Literary Examiner offers a recent interview with Kramer Bussel.

- For more reviews of erotica and other features from and about “the dirtiest minds in literature,” check out Laura Roberts’ Black Heart Magazine.

- Here’s a book preview of Mary Roach’s Bonk: