cover image MORE STORIES WE TELL: The Best Contemporary Short Stories by American Women

MORE STORIES WE TELL: The Best Contemporary Short Stories by American Women

, . . Pantheon, $15 (384pp) ISBN 978-0-375-71450-4

Following editor Martin's 1990 anthology, We Are the Stories We Tell , this volume matches—and perhaps even surpasses—its predecessor. Martin's goal, she writes in her introduction, is "to provide representative narratives that are a pleasure to read and portray women's experiences in the final decades of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first," and her anthology delivers on both fronts. Its roster is a virtual who's who of contemporary letters, featuring writers who rose to prominence in the 1970s and '80s (Ann Beattie, Bobbie Ann Mason), the '90s (Mary Gaitskill, Lorrie Moore) and the current decade (Jhumpa Lahiri, ZZ Packer). Joyce Carol Oates's "Love, Forever" shocks and chills in just four pages, as a mother murders to keep her lover. Alice Munro proves again her incomparable ability to capture entire lifetimes while retaining the intimacy of singular moments in "Floating Bridge." Amy Hempel's "Beg, Sl Tog, Inc, Cont, Rep" is a gorgeous story of loss, healing and obsessive knitting. Writers who are sometimes overlooked, such as Kate Braverman, Toni Cade Bambara and Stephanie Vaughn, earn spots here as well. The narrator in Jamaica Kincaid's "Song of Roland" mourns that "joy is so short-lived there isn't enough time to dwell on its occurrence." But readers of this volume will find lasting pleasure in the strength, breadth and emotional resonance of the stories here; this book is a boon for any fan of contemporary writing by women. (Apr.)