The Planned Parenthood book sale ended on Sunday, and I bought a lot of short story books. Today I am featuring five of them. As I started working on this post, I realized that all of these books are by authors that I have never read before, in any format.
Dressing Up for the Carnival (2000) by Carol Shields
The first book is stories by a Canadian author, Carol Shields. I am always on the lookout for new Canadian authors to read.
The stories here are fairly short; there are 22 stories and the book is 210 pages long, so the average story is around 9 pages.
I also purchased The Republic of Love by this author at the book sale.
You Think It, I'll Say It (2018) by Curtis Sittenfeld
This was the first short story collection by Sittenfeld.
From the description on the dust jacket flap: "Throughout the ten stories in You Think It, I’ll Say It, Sittenfeld upends assumptions about class, relationships, and gender roles in a nation that feels both adrift and viscerally divided."
I also purchased American Wife and Sisterland by this author at the book sale this year.
Birds of America (1998) by Lorrie Moore
This was Lorrie Moore's third short story collection. Some of the reviews I read emphasized dark humor, and sad or depressing stories. So to balance that, I thought I would include this from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
“Bats, flamingos, crows, performing ducks and bird feeders crop up in every story, but the real subject is human nature and the myriad ways Moore’s characters flock together or fly apart in the face of change, stasis or grief. . . . Gorgeous. . . . Rarely has a writer achieved such consistency, humor and compassion.”
Twelve stories in 291 pages, so each story averages about 25 pages.
Island: The Complete Stories (2000) by Alistair MacLeod
This is another Canadian author. I don't know much about Alistair MacLeod, but I do know that his short stories are acclaimed by many. I believe all the short stories in this book are set on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia.
This post at Buried in Print talks about Alistair MacLeod's short stories, and I think that all of the short stories in this book are reviewed on that blog.
All Aunt Hagar's Children (2006) by Edward P. Jones
I was not aware of this author until I heard about his stories at one of the Short Story Wednesday posts at Patricia Abbott's blog.
From the description on the dust jacket flap: "Returning to the city that inspired his first prizewinning book, Lost in the City, Jones has filled this new collection with people who call Washington, D.C., home. Yet it is not the city's power brokers that most concern him but rather its ordinary citizens. All Aunt Hagar's Children turns an unflinching eye to the men, women, and children caught between the old ways of the South and the temptations that await them further north, people who in Jones's masterful hands, emerge as fully human and morally complex, whether they are country folk used to getting up with the chickens or people with centuries of education behind them."
This is Jones's second collection of stories; it is the longest book on this list, at 399 pages.
