Short Story Masterpieces by American Women Writers

When approaching short story collections, I usually look for a compelling theme, something that ties them together. Here the only thing that ties these stories together is, that they are written by women. Culturally and stylishly the individual stories have nothing in common, having a female as their lead in not enough to create a common thread.
Individually speaking, some of these stories are riveting, others are simply included because they were written by women, it seemed, neither fitting in quality nor style into the rest of the collection. I am usually a fan of short fiction, flash or conventional, but it does take the skill to cut the necessary, bring a story to its bare bones, not leave (as some stories in this volume), leave the meat, but loose some of the structure.
Individually these authors, I am sure are interesting, and I will take the time to find more works from them, especially Joyce Carol Oates, who with "Heat" is the best story of the collection. If you are interested in short stories, there are better collections out there. But there are also worse.

This new anthology of 14 stories by acclaimed American women authors follows on from an earlier volume from the same publisher entitled Great Short Stories by American Women. This new collection has stories from famous names such as Edith Wharton and Alice Walker, but also offers one from the now little remembered Constance Fenimore Wilson, a great friend of Henry James, and the virtually unknown Mary E Wilkins Freeman. So there’s much variety of style and subject matter to be enjoyed here, and as each one comes with a short biographical note, the book provides a very interesting selection of women's writings from the 19th to the 21st century.

ARC for review.

*****A brief check-in to say that I am LOVING this book. If you are a short story person, put it on your list!

No hyperbole in the title....these really are masterpieces. You know, when you are in college you tend to read lots of different short stories by many different authors (thank you Norton Anthologies. Or not.). And then, you get older and unless you are a better person than me and read the types of cool magazines that still purchase and print short fiction (God bless them....the spirit is willing but time is short) then I think many of us tend toward novels or non-fiction and, perhaps, the occasional short story collection by a favorite author. I know there are great collections out there, but i just don't get to them and, based on how much I enjoyed this, I'm the loser.

The selection are presented in chronological order and include a brief biography of the writer. Some of the names were familiar (Joyce Carol Oates, naturally, Flannery O'Connor (in the only story in the collection I had already read, "The Life You Save May Be Your Own"), Alice Walker, Eudora Welty) and others weren't (how I have never heard of Constance Fenimore Woolson or Ellen Glasgow? Glasgow won the Pulitzer!).

My personal favorites were "Roast Beef, Medium" by Edna Ferber, "Coming, Aphrodite!" by Willa Cather and "The Shawl" by Louise Erdrich, but, honestly, there's not a dud in the bunch. Definitely worth your time.

Great short stories, well not every one of them. The whole short story book is really worth the time to read.

I'm not always a big fan of short stories, but I really enjoyed this collection. There were a few stories that I didn't love, but most of them were really enjoyable. I also thought there was a good mix of stories and authors. Overall, is was definitely worth reading.

Received from NetGalley.

My thanks goes to Dover Publications for the ARC via NetGalley.

This anthology is exactly what it purports to be - a collection of short fiction written by well-known and slightly lesser-known female literary figures. The stories are entertaining and accessible, of various genres and complexity, and the very short introductions at the beginning of each do a good job placing the works and their authors in the context of the larger picture. It is an altogether brilliant method of sampling the work of writer and deciding whether to research her further, and it goes a lot way towards parting the curtains of time and blowing the dust off a significant, but unfortunately neglected part of literary achievement. The fact that this bears repeating in our so-called modern society is sad, but women can write, have written, and continue to write a lot and continue to write well, and deserve anthologies of their own, especially since they live in a world where their work is often looked down upon, elbowed out of collections and left to gather cobwebs.
An additional thing of note is that we are talking about the art of the short story, in its own way neglected in favour of the novel, so I wonder if it would be too much to say that this anthology focuses on a special kind of literary intersectionality.
Aimed at academic and general audiences alike, the collection covers a time-span of about one hundred years.

Wonderful stories by female authors that demand to be read. A great book for the short story lover.