"The Visitor"

"The Visitor"
by Marisa Silver

Rating: 7.6


Short story about Candy, a recently hired nurse’s aide at a V.A. hospital. Candy had been a nurse’s aide for six months. Mentions that Candy’s mother Sylvie used drugs. Candy was not skinny like her mother; she had her grandmother Marjorie’s build.

"Get out! Get out! Come on, now!" she heard her grandmother say, in the gentle, forgiving tone she'd used when she bathed Sylvie or when Candy touched her material with her dirty hands, as if their transgressions didn't really bother her at all, as if she were grateful for the intrusion. ♦

"Àlvaro Rousselot's Journey"

"Àlvaro Rousselot's Journey"
by Roberto Bolaño

Rating: 8.6


Short story about an Argentine writer named Álvaro Rousselot. Álvaro Rousselot loved literature as much as any Argentine writer of his generation. In 1950, he published his first novel, “Solitude.” A French edition, called “Nights on the Pampas,” was published in 1954. In 1957, a film entitled “Lost Voices,”

For the rest of the day, Rousselot felt that he really was an Argentine writer, something he had begun to doubt over the previous days, or perhaps the previous years, partly because he was unsure of himself, but also because he was unsure about the possibility of an Argentine literature. ♦

"Or Else"

"Or Else"
by Antonya Nelson

Rating: 7.9


Short story about a thirty-nine-year-old man taking his girlfriend to a house in Telluride for the weekend. “My family owns a house in Telluride,” was his favorite, most useful line. Danielle was perhaps different from the other women he’d brought here.

“Danielle asked David now, "Do you wish you were in there instead of out here?"
"No," he said. And then he reviewed his response. It was a lie—or else it wasn't. ♦

"Brooklyn Circle"

Face
"Brooklyn Circle"
by Alice Mattison

Rating: 8.4


Short story about Constance and Jerry, a divorced couple in Brooklyn, and their thirty-year-old daughter Joanna. Fourteen years after their divorce, Constance Tepper agreed to let her former husband, Jerry Elias, spend a few days in her Prospect Heights apartment.

“A glass of water would be good.” Jerry stared at the television screen. The gray-green knitted blob next to the sofa seemed larger than it had that morning. Six Americans had died in a helicopter crash in Iraq. Maybe Con would check the police report on Joanna’s arrest, try to figure out if it was legal after all. She retrieved her drink. Her hands still felt lighter and larger than usual, pleasanter than the gray cold hands she’d carried for years. Again she didn’t touch Jerry. She returned to the kitchen and drank, looking at her hands. ♦

H: "A Report On Our Recent Troubles"

"A Report On Our Recent Troubles"
by Steven Millhauser

Rating: 8.1


Short Story about a community's romantic suicide epidemic.

. . . And perhaps what is happening in our town is simply this, that a familiar flicker, of no harm in itself, has been allowed to develop wthout impediment, that our citizens have become gifted in the dark art of not holding back. For at that moment, before we turn away, we too have seen the distant figure beckon, we too have heard the black wings beating in the brain.
Respectfully submitted to the Committee by the undersigned, this 17th day of September. ♦

"The Dog"

Wild Fires
"The Dog"
by Roddy Doyle

Rating: 6.8


Short story about a middle-aged Irish couple, Joe and Mary, who get a dog. She’d been gone for a couple of hours. He watched her taking off her coat. The ear had been the start of it. Years ago now. Mary had been kissing him.

Now she was taking off her new coat.
He didn’t know her. Didn’t know her hair, didn’t know why she’d have wanted a tan in January—didn’t really know how it was done. Some sort of a lamp, or a bed. He didn’t know.
—Your coat’s nice, he said. ♦