Likely Stories

Favorite Short Fiction

by Patrick Rapa

Tin House's Fantastic Women (224 pp., $16.95) My favorite issue of a litmag issue this year is still on the shelves. This collection of stories by Lydia Millet, Aimee Bender, Kelly Link and lots more does not limit itself to a certain tone or worldview and is memorable as any best-of comp.

A Tranquil Star by Primo Levi (W.W. Norton, 176 pp., $21.95) A chemist and Holocaust survivor, Levi had some unique perspectives on the cruelest and kindest machinations of the human brain. Some of these stories — translated from the Italian for the first time — are so terse and satisfying, they're practically allegories or fables. Except, like his progeny George Saunders, Levi sometimes leaves it up to the reader to bring some sense of morality to the proceedings. It's not a moral world, people.

Twenty Grand: And Other Tales of Love and Money by Rebecca Curtis (Harper Perennial, 272 pp., $13.95) Even when the characters are trapped in snow storms, impoverished beyond belief, seemingly unlucky in every facet of human existence, you want to keep reading just in case there's something resembling redemption or relief on the next page. There usually isn't. These are gloriously constructed tales of desperation.

One Hundred and Forty Five Stories in a Small Box (McSweeney's, 300 pp., $25) Put this in the category of extra extra short. It's a three-volume hardcover set of nanofiction by Dave Eggers, Sarah Manguso and Deb Olin Unferth. Flash/sudden fic sometimes comes off as an experiment on the reader, but these tales are thoughtfully plotted and character-driven, with no bragging about how quickly they were banged out.

(pat@citypaper.net)