Jack McDevitt, "Never Despair"

After burying another member of their expedition, Chaka and Quait decide to turn back.

(from Wastelands)

Then Chaka meets somebody she guesses is a ghost, but is most likely an old amusement park attraction (some kinda fancy interactive hologram, most likely). Neither one seems to recognize each other's world, because so much time has passed. I really dug this story: weirdly fascinating but kinda subtle. Awesome.
What Happened: One way or another, civilization has mostly collapsed. There are plenty of ruins, but no one seems to have much connection to them or the way earth used to be. What specifically went down isn't clear.
Destructo-O-Meter: 8.

Tobias S. Buckell, "Waiting for the Zephyr"

A young woman awaits the return of the trade ship, which represents an escape from her boring outpost life.

(from Wasteland)

This is a short one, a teensy lil adventure story about hope and curiosity, but not really about the apocalypse. I mean, there was one, but people seem to have come to terms with it, in a way. There's an implied stability.
What Happened: Oh, you know, war. The Middle East was nuked, as was Europe. America had to learn to live without gas.
Destruct-O-Meter: 6. Most countries, one assumes, have been wiped off the map. Good ol U.S.A. is still around, but fragmented and strange.
Looks like you can go here and have this story read to you.

George R. R. Martin, "Dark, Dark Were The Tunnels"

Two men descended from people who escaped earth before a surface-killing nuclear war run into a blind cave creature who descended from people who survived the aforementioned nuclear war.

(from Wastelands)

Okay so we've got Greel, who's got a telepathic partnership with a rat, and we've got Cliff and Von, humans on a salvage expedition. It's really not likely that these four will come to an understanding, but I really wished they had. Not that I was surprised when one or more of them ended up dead. And frankly, the serpentine language was starting to grate on me, and I was glad when the story ended.
What Happened: Nuclear war and fallout, plus the corresponding genetic mutation.
Destruct-O-Meter: 8? Earth is pretty effed, since you can't live on the surface and there are worm creatures that eat people. I'd call that an apocalypse.

Jonathan Lethem, "How We Got In Town and Out Again"

Two drifters join a traveling virtual reality sideshow.

(from Wastelands) T

his is a weird little young desire story set in a time when society is fragmented and depraved, "Araby" meets Running Man. Okay not really. Things are a lot more tame in this world. This sideshow involves people running around in a virtual reality made of old games and pieces of code for the amusement of a paying crowd. Thing is, the guys running the show are jerks — of course, that's a sci-fi sideshow tradition — but they don't seem to be particularly cruel about it. The pay up, they provide food, they abide by the rules.
What Happened: I dunno. Is this even the same reality as ours? We know towns are things to be snuck into, that food is scarce and money is hard to come by.
Destruct-O-Meter: 2? The degree to which the government and/or infrastructure has been compromised isn't clear (which makes things really spooky).

M. Rickert, "Bread and Bombs"

After terrorists kill people with poisoned a small town neighborhood becomes increasingly fearful of the foreign family that moves in.

(from Wastelands)

I put the helmet on and listened to it fly past. Not us. Not our town. Not tonight.

Overt in its allusions to 9/11 and the subsequent paranoia, this story is not a simple satire or an obvious fable. The already hazy logic of the adults is filtered through the murky, limited perspective of a fourth grader. Which means we don't get answers to a lot of our questions about what the hell exactly is going on in the world.
What Happened: Relentless terrorist attacks seem to have fragmented the US's infrastructure, with mail and information becoming limited (maybe?). Citizens act like planes are only flown by terrorists.
Destruct-O-Meter: 2. Far as I can tell, this is more of an Apocapinconvenience.

Paolo Bacigalupi, "The People of Sand and Slag"

Three futuristic super soldiers find a dog.

(from Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse)

Down in the valley, the bio-job’s headlong run slowed to a trot. It seemed unaware of us. Closer now, we could make out its shape: A shaggy quadruped with a tail. Dreadlocked hair dangled from its shanks like ornaments, tagged with tailings mud clods. It was stained around its legs from the acids of the catchment ponds, as though it had forded streams of urine.

Crazy sicko story. In this future, human being are so advanced (thanks to "science," as they keep awkwardly pointing out) that they can regenerate lost limbs, perform amazingly dexterous feats and eat anything. The world, meanwhile, seems to have gone to shit, a harsh, dark, violent place where even the beaches of Hawaii, where our three protagonists go to swim, has barbed wire in the sand and petroleum in the water. Messed up.
What Happened: Science happened. There are these techweevils inside everybody that turn them into near-gods. But also, biological creatures are pretty much either in zoos or extinct (this lone dog being a surprising exception), thanks to, I guess, pollution and the plundering of the natural world.
Destruct-O-Meter Score: 4. I mean, this is a messed up world, wholly unappealing, but it doesn't necessarily scream apocalypse to me. This is more like some twisted possibility that humanity/civilization might evolve into.
Read it here.

Orson Scott Card, "Salvage"

Deaver wants to look for gold by sailing out to where the skyscrapers stick out of the water.

(from Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse)

This is a crazy strange story about survivors scraping a living together by salvaging scrap. People live freely, for the most part, though Deaver Teague is not terribly trusting of the Mormons and their government. His apparent atheism causes friends to distrust him, making him want to find a place where he belongs.
What Happened: A big war, I think, and some catastrophic flood that's left Salt Lake City submerged. Gas, metal and other supplies are limited. There does appear to be some stability in the social and municipal infrastructure.
Destruct-O-Meter Score: 3? Maybe? Could be much worse than that, but the reader is rarely given a glimpse outside what this one little outpost. Perhaps it's only America that's been bombed backward.
Orson Scott Card's home page.

Stephen King, "The End of the Whole Mess"

The brother of a well-meaning, civilization-killing genius tries to explain what happened to humanity in his last few hours.

(from Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse)

Funny and crazy, though not exactly scary, this is the messed up little fable of the too-smart brother thinking he can solve mankind's self-destructive tendencies. It's strange to think this was written in 1986 — although its description of Waco, TX, as one of the calmest places in the country does date it a little — because so much of the violence and unrest alluded to could be similarly described today. (According to Wikipedia, there's a TV version of this story out there somewhere.)

What Happened: A chemical presumed to contain a calming agent is dropped into a massive volcano so that, upon eruption, it will be dispersed around the world. Unfortunately it gives everybody Alzheimer's.
Destruct-O-Meter Score: 4. With its faculties horrifically and suddenly impaired, all of humanity is presumed to headed for an early demise. The planet, however, will probably be better off.
I've been wanting a collection like this. As in: I have verbalized — have specifically wished for — an anthology of end-of-the-world stories. You can have all your Illness Stories and your Turns Out Dad Was A Scoundrel Stories and This Lady Silently Bore A Burden Stories. I'll take ragnarok, thanks.

Rivka Galchen, "The Region of Unlikeness"

A young grad student and two academic types form an unlikely trio.

(from The New Yorker, March 24, 2008)

“Jacob’s a boor, isn’t he?” Ilan said. Or maybe he said “bore” and I heard “boor” because Ilan’s way of talking seemed so antiquated to me. I had so few operating sources of pride at that time. I was tutoring and making my lonely way through graduate school in civil engineering, where my main sense of joy came from trying to silently outdo the boys—they still played video games—in my courses. I started going to that coffee shop every day.

What at first seems like a story about gender politics among intellectuals turns out to be something much more entertaining (in a sci-fi/conspiracy sort of way). Would say more but it's actually been awhile since I read this one. You can read it here.

Gary Lutz, “Waking Hours”

A guy takes a job teaching middles managers how to give out awards. Or something.

(from Stories in the Worst Way)

This one’s kinda murky, and besides, it’s hard to concentrate right now. My captor — whose attempt to force me read a Henry James story was thwarted by the fact that book was smelly and yellowy, with really small type — is asleep after her fourth consecutive night drinking to excess. As usual, her bedtime ritual included rum, ginger beer and incessant and pointless listmaking, insisting I assess the day’s events and encounters. Now, as she slumbers, I plot my escape.

Herman Melville, "Bartleby the Scrivener"

An eccentric clerk would rather not do anything that he's told to do.

(from 40 Short Stories: A Portable Anthology)

In this very attitude did I sit when I called to him, rapidly stating what it was I wanted him to do—namely, to examine a small paper with me. Imagine my surprise, nay, my consternation, when without moving from his privacy, Bartleby in a singularly mild, firm voice, replied, “I would prefer not to.”

I now believe my captor to be forcing me to adhere to some pre-planned regimen of what can best be described as Clerk Fiction. While I enjoyed this story quite a bit, I fear what lies ahead for me. How many rumorous, claustrophobic tales of politeness and bureaucracy will be subjected to? What happens when this subgenre has exhausted itself? What will my captor — who, as I type this, is spinning through her iPod, declaring one song her favorite of all time, then another, though few are allowed to reach the one minute mark — what will she do next?

Nikolai Gogol, "The Overcoat"

A poor, picked-on clerk needs a new coat.

(from The Art of the Short Story)

So, in a certain department serves a certain official—not a very prominent official, it must be allowed—short of stature, somewhat pockmarked, rather red-haired, rather blind, judging from appearances, with a small bald spot on his forehead, with wrinkles on his cheeks, with a complexion of the sort called sanguine. … How could he help it? The Petersburg climate was responsible for that. As for his rank—for with us the rank must be stated first of all—he was what is called a perpetual titular councillor, over which, as is well known, some writers make merry and crack their jokes, as they have the praiseworthy custom of attacking those who cannot bite back.

I am being held against my will in a comfortable apartment in St. Louis and being forced to read stories and listen to the same Fake Project song again and again. (This is much better than my captor's DMX phase, to which I awoke yesterday.) On top of the indignity of required reading while on vacation, I am being forced to state in no uncertain terms that this story is brilliant, from the tiniest phrase to the overarching plot, and moreover I'm being coerced into affirming the brilliance of the recommendation as well. Thank you wise captor for making me read a story you know to be so excellent that I dare not disagree. This story is all over the web. If you too are being forced to read it, go Google Gogol.

Steven Millhauser, "The Room in the Attic"

A boy strikes up a friendship with a girl who lives in total darkness.

(from Dangerous Laughter)

Kick ass. This was long and crazy one. The main guy isn't an unreliable narrator in the more common sense, that you can't count on his judgments. No, this kid is just a bad reporter. Ask some question, man! Do some investigating. Tell us what you mean when you say confusing things. No, don't. The story's better this way, maybe? No. I wanna know.

Read this one on the plane to St. Louis.

Desmond Warzel, "Wikihistory"

Time travelers report back on their missions to kill and unkill Hitler.

(from Abyss and Apex)

At 18:06:59, BigChill wrote:
Take it easy on the kid, SilverFox316; everybody kills Hitler on their first trip. I did. It always gets fixed within a few minutes, what's the harm?

This story is hilarious and a little bit brilliant. Seriously.Read it here.

Jhumpa Lahiri, "Hell-Heaven"

When Pranab Kaku stops visiting, it's tough on the the family.

(from Unaccustomed Earth)

I remember vividly the sound of his exuberant laughter and the sight of his lanky body slouched or sprawled on the dull, mismatched furniture that had come with our apartment. He had a striking face, with a high forehead and a thick mustache, and overgrown, untamed hair that my mother said made him look like the American hippies who were everywhere in those days. His long legs jiggled rapidly up and down wherever he sat, and his elegant hands trembled when he held a cigarette between his fingers, tapping the ashes into a teacup that my mother began to set aside for this exclusive purpose. Though he was a scientist by training, there was nothing rigid or predictable or orderly about him. He always seemed to be starving, walking through the door and announcing that he hadn’t had lunch, and then he would eat ravenously, reaching behind my mother to steal cutlets as she was frying them, before she had a chance to set them properly on a plate with red-onion salad. In private, my parents remarked that he was a brilliant student, a star at Jadavpur who had come to M.I.T. with an impressive assistantship, but Pranab Kaku was cavalier about his classes, skipping them with frequency. “These Americans are learning equations I knew at Usha’s age,” he would complain. He was stunned that my second-grade teacher didn’t assign any homework, and that at the age of seven I hadn’t yet been taught square roots or the concept of pi.

Beautiful and insightful story. Read it here.

William H. Gass, "A Little History of Modern Music"

A professor gives a whimsical and winding lecture that's supposedly about music.

(from O. Henry Prize Stories 2008)

What a nutty, wild ride. Smart yes, but also really insane. But plausibly so, perhaps. It's funny that the first sentence is the only real exposition, a little scene setting, and it's fairly useless. The most boring sentence in the piece, but maybe that's because most of these sentences are hilariously entwined vines, marvelous for their organic and structures. I think I'll be thinking about this story for a while.
You can actually listen to the author read some of the story here.

Kevin Brockmeier, "A Fable With a Photograph of a Glass Mobile on the Wall"

A guy enjoys a peaceful life making wooden furniture until a magazine article draws unwanted attention.

(from The View from the Seventh Layer)

So, yeah,
after the article is published the phone won't stop ringing, everybody either wants in on his action or wants to buy furniture. He can't concentrate. So he takes a four-month job teaching a class on woodworking and the house he stays in has pictures of a boy that can see him. I guess this is a fable because it's told simply and gently, not because there's any kind of lesson to be learned here. That's fine.

Donald Ray Pollock, "Dynamite Hole"

A boy dodges the draft by hiding out in a rural wasteland.

(from Knockemstiff)

As sick and uncomfortable as this story was, it was also kind of entertaining. The narrator is a horrible bastard, not of the love-to-hate variety, but it's hard to take your eyes off him. He's a reliable narrator and an amoral ignorant monster.

Tobias Wolff, "That Room"

A high school kid is proud of his first real adult job baling hay.

(from Our Story Begins)

Our older narrator knows things that he, as the young protagonist, was still to green to figure out. This takes a steady hand, storytelling-wise, and of course Wolff has that. I particularly enjoyed the way the narrative screeched to a halt for a detour into something more poetic and far-reaching. This story reminded me of Paul F. Tompkins rant on how people who go berry picking are ripping off his idea for a migrant worker fantasy camp. It's really funny, and thematically similar to "That Room" in that there are the people for whom the job is necessary and people who need it. It's a story about understanding privilege.

Donald Ray Pollock, "Real Life"

Drunk dad starts a fight in the bathroom at the drive-in. Son also gets in a fight. Dad is proud.

(from Knockemstiff)

Poor kid. Good story though. This is the first of the 18 connected stories in this collection. For the purposes of a site like this, an island is better than an archipelago, but this is a promising start.

Alexi Zentner, "Touch"

The dangerous lives of logging families.

(from O. Henry Prize Stories 2008)

The men floated the logs early, in September, a chain of headless trees jamming the river as far as I and the other children could see. My father, the foreman, stood at the top of the chute hollering at the men and shaking his mangled hand, urging them on. “That’s money in the water, boys,” he yelled, “push on, push on.” I was ten that summer, and I remember him as a giant, though my mother tells me that he was not so tall that he had to duck his head to cross the threshold of our house, the small foreman’s cottage with the covered porch that stood behind the mill.

I love a story like this, one with this complete world where you know the rules, you know all the ways things can go wrong, know the likely scope of the action. It's not that it's simple, not exactly, but that it's well-defined. So, we know the father is going to die at some point, it's said outright by our narrator, and we know all the things that can kill you in these harsh Canadian hinterlands, but it's still a surprise and heartbreak when it happens. Very powerful stuff.
Here's Alexi Zentner's site.

Edward P. Jones, "Bad Neighbors"

The good neighbors don't like the new people who move in on the block.

(from The O. Henry Prize Stories 2008)

Grace Bennington appeared to be the matriarch; she might have been fifty, but, with her broad weight and her gray hair, it was difficult for anyone to be certain. On a good day, her Eighth Street neighbors might have said forty or forty-five, but on a bad day seventy-five would not have seemed unfair. Only one thing was certain--she had known hard work, and it showed in face and body.

This is as interesting and complicated a study of race and class as you will find in fiction that isn't boring. That Jones is slow to introduce race is very telling; it's a sort of psych experiment on the reader. Well, what race did you think these people were? What about the other people? Why did you think that? It's complicated, as it should be. Beautiful, too.
For some reason you can read this story on a blog.

Kevin Brockmeier, "A Fable Ending in The Sound of a Thousand Parakeets"

A mute man turns his house into an aviary for parakeets.

(from The View From The Seventh Layer)

This is about as honest as titles get. The story is a fable, in the yarny ridiculous sense, with the neat ending and the simplified version of a something you could otherwise picture as real. (As in: The man's loneliness is truthful, but where's all the bird poop?) And certainly the sound at the end is the one we're promised, although the parakeets are mimicking non-bird sounds. So maybe the title's honest, but the birds are not.

Wells Tower, "Door In Your Eye"

A guy moves to a new neighborhood and hooks up with a local hottie eccentric.

(from A Public Space #5)

EXCITING ANNOUNCEMENT

I Read A Short Story Today officially endorses Wells Tower for president. We agree with him on the issues: strong characters, progressive plot structure, attention to detail, and hope for a world more interesting than the one we have now.
Wells Tower 2008 — Blood Eagles for Everyone!

Sheila Kohler, "The Transitional Object"

A hard-up student comes back to her professor's office on a mission.

(from The O. Henry Prize Stories 2008)

We don't know what her mission is at first, and it's a weird mixed of tantalizing and annoying. And then, when we find out, well, It's really kinda run of the mill Law & Order type stuff. That's the big-picture plot though; and it's the sentence-by-sentence intrigue and desperation that carries the day here.

Steven Millhauser, "A Change in Fashion"

A new trend in the fashion world takes the focus away from the female form. Or draws attention to it by hiding it.

(from The O. Henry Prize Stories 2008)

No main characters. No emotion. Just a really funny and appropriately pointless parable about the whimsical nature of fashion. See, one day the trend moves away from hugging the female form toward something humorously roomy, eventually hiding the person entirely. Is there something extra, something deep going on here? I dunno. Great story though.

Zhu Wen, "I Love Dollars"

Father comes to town which means they should track down the other son and/or get dad laid.

(from I Love Dollars and Other Stories of China)

Okay. It took me days, maybe a week, to finish this one. Not only because 40 pages is a lot, but because the whirlwind pace, the strangeness of the characters' actions and motivations — it was all too much. This isn't the China you see on TV — the unbreathable over-industrialization, the oppressive government — Wen paints a seedy, drunken, charming, hooker-filled place of rampant capitalism. More like consumerism. I thought I was going to end up writing that I hated this story, that it was all just too much, trying to hard. But no. I dug it. It was a chore to get through, but only for reasons I won't stand by. These characters are so unique, so fucked in the head, you kinda gotta love em.

Kate Wilhelm, "O Homo, O Femina, O Tempora"

A scientist believes time is slowing down.

(from The Seventh Omni Book of Science Fiction)

This story was kind of over before I was ready for it, and I'm not sure what I was supposed to get from it. There's this subtext with the wife dismissing the guy's supposedly earth-shattering discovery, and the guy has this rival who thinks time is speeding up, and also the guy seems utterly disoriented and... I don't know. Interesting ifnot satisfying.

Michael Martone, "Fort Wayne is Seventh on Hitler's List"

The war is over, or the war never happened.

(from Double-Wide)

Cool, hard-to-explain rumination on post-war and post-fear-of-war in Indiana. Really excellent stuff. I'm tired. Read it here.

Michael Martone, "The War That Never Ends"

He follows the tree-cutters, selling ice cream to the kids who gather to watch.

(from Double-Wide)

Martone is not messing around. Every word is well, chosen, every sentence is tight, every story is short. I'm not sure if I was left wanting more. I know a lot of gaps weren't filled in, but in the hands of a writer like this, I feel like the story ended as it should.

Michael Martone, "A Short, Short Story Complete on These Two Pages"

Profile of a used-to-be non-romance between two book store employees.

(from Double-Wide)

Beautiful. There's a certain kind of relationship, a work thing, that isn't love, but it's a perfect and temporary kinship, the kind where for 32 hours a week, or so, two people are riding the same wavelength. It's a hard thing to explain, but this story illustrates it smartly and succinctly (although it's more like 4 pages). Read it here.

Neil Smith, "Green Fluorescent Protein"

A guy tries to resist his attraction to his best friend.

(from Bang Crunch Stories)

Good stuff. This story doesn't beat its own quirks to death. I don't wanna sound like a trailer, but this one's funny and heartwarming. Four stars. A must read.

Lucy Thomas, "This Story Is Small Because I'm Not Sure It's Good"

A family runs over a turtle.

(from McSweeney's #3)

Eh. Meta titles and tiny type. But the story's good and the the turtle lives.

Steven Millhauser, "The Disappearance of Elaine Coleman"

A guy obsesses over the mysterious vanishing of a woman he barely knew. A woman nobody seemed to know.

(from Dangerous Laughter)

This story has some interesting things to say, I think, about the need for a sense of common civility between people, to not ignore them or avoid them or let them simply fade away. We should feel obligated to keep everybody in the game. But it also hints at an extreme side effect of this proposed hard-wired empathy, that we become ravenous ghouls, hungry for mystery and grim truth, even about people we never met. And that's, seriously, how we end up with vultures like TMZ and Nancy Grace, pecking at skeletons for every last morsel of meat, gaining sustenance by embracing only that which is as dead and ugly as the world that made them. We can do better, people.

Joe Hill, "20th Century Ghost"

A talkative ghost pops up in a movie theater once in a while.

(from 20th Century Ghosts)

Downside: The prose is really wordy and inelegant. The characters are paper thin. The plot is really just an idea. The extended italicized passages are difficult to read and unnecessarily annoying, seeing as how highlight+opt+i would have fixed it.
Upside: The idea is a memorable one. The pace is quick. There are some satisfying surprises and neat images. The ending is beautiful and meaningless.
OK, I'll keep swinging away at this anthology. I had heard good things about Joe Hill, and I'm not quite on board, but with this one he's earned further investigation.

Joe Hill, "Best New Horror"

A horror editor tries to track down the author of a particularly horrific and alluring story.

(from 20th Century Ghosts)

Meta can be fun but let's not pretend it's not easier than straight-up creation. "Best New Horror" is insidery, playing with form and the popular culture surrounding it (including a visit to a horror con with zero sarcastic observations). Our narrator, Eddie Carroll, is exhaustingly described as an expert in all things horror/fantasy/murder fiction, but as to whether he's a whole person with interesting thoughts I'm not so sure. He's an archetype on a collision course with the inevitable end. That Hill is apparently conscious of this, that he made this decision with the express purpose of commenting on the form, doesn't make me want to forgive a whole lot. Because, meta-horror is still horror and meta is still easy.
I know, I know, this is genre fiction — dig your plot and bury yourself in it. But the intro to this anthology, the part of it I could read without feeling like it was a spoiler fest, was a standing ovation to Joe Hill's skillz as a literary horror guy. And the story itself echoed that promise, in a way, with the mysterious Peter Kilrue's crude fiction coming recommended by the editor of a "serious" litmag.
So, yeah, this story had a decidedly undecided (read: literary:( ) ending, but I guess I was expecting something written a little tighter, or something where I bought what the author was selling. The New York Times praised Hill's "nervy" critiquing of his chosen genre, but I don't see it that way. You (and our narrator) would have to be stupid not to get bored reading story after story about vampire sex.
That said, the horror world is largely unknown to me — and Hill kept me mostly entertained and often curious about where it was all going — so I expect I'll give this collection a few more chances to kick my ass.

Steven Millhauser, "Cat 'n' Mouse"

The cat wants to catch the mouse. The mouse outwits the cat every time. How could this ever end?

(from Dangerous Laughter)

The mouse crashes through, leaving a mouse-shaped hole. The cat crashes through, replacing the mouse-shaped hole with a larger, cat-shaped hole. In the living room, they race over the back of the couch, across the piano keys (delicate mouse tune, crash of cat chords), along the blue rug. The fleeing mouse snatches a glance over his shoulder, and when he looks forward again he sees the floor lamp coming closer and closer. Impossible to stop—at the last moment, he splits in half and rejoins himself on the other side. Behind him the rushing cat fails to split in half and crashes into the lamp: his head and body push the brass pole into the shape of a trombone.

Kick ass. This is basically a blow-by-blow retelling of the epic battles between Tom and Jerry (not so much Itchy and Scratchy). There's some occasional meta stuff, wherein the two immortal enemies ponder to pointlessness of their situation, but mostly this is just matter of fact storytelling. Cat builds a thing. Mouse turns thing against cat, with humorously brutal results. Awesome. Awesome. Read it here.

Primo Levi, "Bureau of Vital Statistics"

An office dedicated to assigning causes of death is no place for a man with qualms.

(from A Tranquil Star)

This is a what-if-heaven-was-a-bureaucracy stories — believe it or not a legit and not uncommon literary genre. In this one, there's an unsettling feeling that even these people who run the world, in a sense, don't know everything. Like why the elevators sometimes don't work, for one.

Connor Kilpatrick, "Yuri"

Two guys who work at a crappy warehouse become friends.

(from McSweeney's #25)

This story is dirty and moody, but kinda scattershot. The point and the plotline were lost on my. Though there were memorable moments, it coulda used some kinda conclusion. There's nothing wrong with making the readers feel like they read a whole story. That would have been nice. So: Not satisfying but worth the time.

A.L. Kennedy, "How To Find Your Way in Woods"

Two ex-lovers reunite for no good reason.

(from Indelible Acts)

I liked how she doesn't know why she invited him to her place in the woods, and how he doesn't know why he accepted it. I didn't like the stilted back-and-forth mindgames the two played with each other, but once they started treating each other a little more civilly, the plot started feeling more lucid. This story brought to mind a very specific memory of a particularly excellent place. So, for personal reasons, I ended up liking this one.
A.L. Kennedy's home page.

Alejandro Zambra, "Bonsai"

Emilia and Julio were in love once.

(from Virginia Quarterly Review, Winter 2008)

This story is a heartbreaker. It's beautiful, it lures you in with spectacular moments in which to lose yourself. It warns you from the very first line, that you may not like where things are going, that Emilia is going to die. It's a promise you forget the more you learn and like about her. Surely someone like her can never die. And she does. And it breaks your heart. It's a kick to the gut.
More about this story and Zambra here.

Roddy Doyle, "Black Hoodie"

Three kids shoplift as part of a school project.

(from The Deportees)

Every age has these levels of getting it and not getting it, where you understand how one aspect of the world works — love, money, social structure — and not others things — sex, the stock market, history. I always enjoy the type of narrator, like the one in "Black Hoodie," whose worldview is at once sensible and ill-informed. He still has his youthful idealism, though Doyle tricks you into thinking that was long gone with the opening passage. The author's own knack for optimism triumphs over the story's otherwise serious circumstances and one may be inclined to call this a cop out. C'mon people, every once in a while the good guys win. If you can call them good guys.

Roddy Doyle, "The Pram"

Every day Alina feels eyes on her as she goes out to walk the baby around Dublin.

(from The Deportees)

A classic-style, old world ghost story, with slow building tension and spooky, unexplainable mystery. It's so strange whose worldview wins out. There's the prim and yuppie-ish O'Reilly family (power mom, smarmy dad, privileged kids), and there's the trapped Alina, whose only power over the kids seems to be her spoooooky immigrant status. She knows her story's a fake, right?

Siel Ju, "Five Boys, Three Guys, A Dog Walker, And A Suit"

Assessing the dudes she sees around town.

(from Zyzzyva, Winter, 2007)

boy with black arm socks at Insomnia—Los Angeles
You’re not the usual guy I date, but maybe it’s practical to date men your friends find slightly repulsive.

Just descriptions and projections, not a lot to hold onto or contemplate. Kinda funny, kinda sharp, very short. Read it here.
More on Siel Ju here.

Roy Kesey, "Martin"