"Great Experiment"

"Great Experiment"
by Jeffrey Eugenides

Rating:7.2



Short story about an editor at a small publishing house in Chicago who conspires with an accountant to embezzle money from his wealthy publisher. “If you’re so smart, how come you’re not rich?” It was the city that wanted to know. Chicago.

“Anyway, you did good, kiddo. You boiled Tocqueville down to his essence. I remember when I first read this book. Blew me away.”
In his vibrant, scratchy voice, Jimmy began to recite a passage of “Democracy in America.” It was the passage they were putting on the bookmarks. Out in Montecito, bald, liver-spotted, in a tank top and shorts probably, the old libertine and libertarian crowed out his favorite lines: “In that land the great experiment of the attempt to construct society upon a new basis was to be made by civilized man,” Jimmy read, “and it was there, for the first time, that theories hitherto unknown, or deemed impracticable, were to exhibit a spectacle for which the world had not been prepared by the history of the past.”
Snow pummelled the glass. The lakefront was obscured, the water too. Kendall was enclosed in a dark space high above a city rising from a coast engulfed in darkness.
“That fucking kills me,” Jimmy said. “Every time.” ♦

"The Region of Unlikeness"

"The Region of Unlikeness"
by Rivka Galchen

Rating: 8.4



Short story, written in the first person, about a female graduate student who becomes involved with two older men who are interested in the science of time travel. Narrator describes meeting the two men, Jacob and Ilan, by chance in a coffee shop on the Upper West Side.

We know that the general theory of relativity is compatible with the existence of space-times in which travel to the past or remote future is possible. The logician Kurt Gödel proved this back in the late nineteen-forties, and it remains essentially undisputed. Whether or not humans (in our very particular space-time) can in fact travel to the past—we still don’t know. Maybe. Surely our world obeys rules still alien to our imaginations. Maybe Jacob is my destiny. Regardless, I continue to avoid him. ♦

"The Bell Ringer"

"The Bell Ringer"
by John Burnside

Rating: 8.2



Short story about a woman who realizes that her marriage is unfulfilling and decides to take up bell ringing. Eva Lowe turns off the main coastal road and takes the back way through Kinaldy woods, a magical route she associates with her childhood and her father’s love of folk tales.

As soon as he was in, the car pulled away, heading out of the village and west, toward the lower woods, where the snow would be thick all night, thick and heavy and, even on the road that ran up to Kinaldy and Lathockar, completely unmarked, except for a line of tire tracks that would soon vanish into whiteness. ♦

"Raj, Bohemian"

"Raj, Bohemian"
by Hari Kunzru

Rating: 8.8



Short story about a hipster who discovers his friends are inserting product placements in their social lives. The narrator’s hip friends are poor but beautiful and have hectic social lives. Sunita, a close friend of the narrator, invites him to one of her themed dinner parties; the invitation says “Eating is Honest" printed in an old-fashioned cursive font.

“You look awful,” Raj said. “Are you feeling O.K.?”
I stared up at him. He was holding out a glass of water.
“Is it good?” I asked.
He shook his head, not understanding.
“Is it better than other brands of water?”
“It’s just water. From the tap.”
I took a sip.
“Are you sick?” he asked gently.
“No.”
“What is it, then?”
I closed my eyes. “I’m not sure. I think I might be bored.”
“Ah.”
“Is there anything going on tonight?”
He smiled and started to tell me about a party, a guest list, a secret venue. I took out my phone to punch in the contact number.. ♦

"Leaving for Kenosha"

"Leaving for Kenosha"
by Richard Ford

Rating: 7.5



Short story, set in New Orleans on the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, in which a father takes his teen-age daughter to the Lower Ninth Ward to say goodbye to a classmate who is moving to Wisconsin. It was the anniversary of the disaster.

And for an instant, then, Walter experienced a sensation of something being about to happen around him. It wasn’t clear what. But a sensation of impendment. Neither good nor bad. Though it also occurred to him that if he could just pause in his thinking now, not follow his thoughts any further, just breathe, then this sensation would in all likelihood develop into nothing bad. So that he went on with driving back toward the center of the city, rising in the steamy distance of the late afternoon. He would make no more efforts to answer Louise’s childish questions about Italy and China. No words were really the right words to answer with. In a day he’d forget all this. This was a smart child—Louise—but not smart beyond her years. She would forget many things, too. ♦