The entries for this year’s Best American Fantasy have been announced. To whet everybody’s appetites for this interesting and variegated collection, I’ve provided links to all of the stories that are online:
“A Hard Truth About Waste Management” by Sumanth Prabhaker
from Identity Theory
“The Stolen Father” by Eric Roe
from Redivider
“The Saffron Gatherer” by Elizabeth Hand
from Saffron & Brimstone (M Press)
“The Whipping” by Julia Elliott
from The Georgia Review
“A Better Angel” by Chris Adrian
from The New Yorker
“Draco Campestris” by Sarah Monette
from Strange Horizons
“Geese” by Daniel Coudriet
from The Mississippi Review
“The Chinese Boy” by Ann Stapleton
from Alaska Quarterly Review
“The Flying Woman” by Meghan McCarron
from Strange Horizons
“First Kisses from Beyond the Grave” by Nik Houser
from Gargoyle
“Song of the Selkie” by Gina Ochsner
from Tin House
“A Troop [sic] of Baboons” by Tyler Smith
from Pindeldyboz
“Pieces of Scheherazade” by Nicole Kornher-Stace
from Zahir
“Origin Story” by Kelly Link (excerpt)
from A Public Space
“An Experiment in Governance” by E.M. Schorb
from The Mississippi Review
“The Next Corpse Collector” by Ramola D
from Green Mountains Review
“The Village of Ardakmoktan” by Nicole Derr
from Pindeldyboz
“The Man Who Married a Tree” by Tony D’Souza
from McSweeney’s
“A Fable with Slips of White Paper Spilling from the Pockets” by Kevin Brockmeier
from Oxford American
“Pregnant” by Catherine Zeidler (excerpt)
from Hobart
“The Warehouse of Saints” by Robin Hemley
from Ninth Letter
“The Ledge” by Austin Bunn (excerpt)
from One Story
“Lazy Taekos” by Geoffrey A. Landis
from Analog
“For the Love of Paul Bunyan” by Fritz Swanson
from Pindeldyboz
“An Accounting” by Brian Evenson
from Paraspheres (Omnidawn)
“Abraham Lincoln Has Been Shot” by Daniel Alarcón
from Zoetrope: All-Story
“Bit Forgive” by Maile Chapman
from A Public Space
“The End Of Narrative (1-29; Or 29-1)” by Peter LaSalle
from The Southern Review
“Kiss” by Melora Wolff
from The Southern Review
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (
Who knew A Public Space was a fantasy mag? Or Oxford American, etc.
I love Maile Chapman’s story “Bit Forgive”–she’s someone whose work I’m always on the lookout for.
AW