“She captures so beautifully the isolation that many feel in an increasingly cloistered Midwest, the desperation we all experience in our teeter-totter of needs and wants”: Mike Ferro appreciates Laura Hulthen Thomas’s “Sole Suspect” in this Stories We Love essay.
“Driscoll was a poet before turning to fiction. Poetic language is dreamlike, and therefore suited to close narration. And Driscoll’s elegant language anchors the reader in the haunting dream.”
“This is the last gift of King’s story—her decision to allow happiness to have the last word, to make the ephemeral feeling permanent, if only in fiction”: Lillian Li on Lily King’s One Story story.
Every time I read this story I get a thrill, the sensation of having to hold on tight for a wild, plummeting ride, a dizzying shift in perspective, a cascade of questions that I can’t answer.
“His fiction is baffling and fresh enough to revert even experienced readers back into novices”: Eric McDowell on metafiction and writing lessons in César Aira’s “The All That Ploughs through the Nothing.” Aira’s latest in translation, The Little Buddhist Monk & The Proof, comes out today from New Directions.
“The author gives us just what she promised: more than meets the eye”: Mari Carlson on Becky Hagenston’s “Scavengers.”
“Our participation in the story is much more than simply a reader or an observer”: Keith Lesmeister on Michael Cunningham’s “White Angel.”
“The narrator’s voice is earnest and haunted”: Joshua Bodwell on why he loves Andrew Porter’s “River Dog.”
Joshua Bodwell shares about the lasting impact Tom Perrotta’s “The Weiner Man” has made on him.
“Imagination is not just suspension of disbelief but also a method of investigation, a way of knowing and a means of effecting change.”
Stories We Love: “White Angel,” by Michael Cunningham
Stories We Love: Donald Barthelme’s “The School,” In Which is Revealed the Meaning of Life
Stories We Love: "A Small, Good Thing" by Raymond Carver
Stories We Love: "The Fall River Axe Murders," by Angela Carter
Stories We Love: "Incarnations of Burned Children"
