Maxwell Suzuki
  • Home
  • Writing / Art
  • Reviews
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Home
  • Writing / Art
  • Reviews
  • Blog
  • Contact

Reviews

Review of The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2011

4/29/2023

0 Comments

 
​The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2011 is a collection of lists, poems, stories, essays, and comics edited by Dave Eggers, with an introduction by Guillermo Del Toro. It’s a thick and somewhat intimidating collection, but regardless, I enjoyed many of the stories within its pages. These stories/essays included ‘We Show What We Have Learned’ by Clare Beams (about a teacher whose body falls apart in front of her students), ‘The Deep’ by Anthony Doerr (about a man whose mother kept him from the world because of his heart condition), ‘Weber’s Head’ by J. Robert Lennon (about a roommate feud between a sculptor and a web editor), ‘The Suicide Catcher’ by Michael Paterniti (about the real-life Mr. Chen who catches people from jumping off the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge), and ‘Pleiades’ by Anjali Sachdeva (about in vitro septuplets dying due to health complications). These stories were tender, loving, and ached with life. Specifically, I thought ‘The Deep’ was powerful in how it treated the mother’s overprotection and the son’s desire to live even if it meant he was bound to die.
 
The story by Joyce Carol Oates, ‘A Hole in the Head’, had an interesting premise and was written well enough for me to be held by its narrator. Though the story felt like it fell squarely within the territory of genre fiction and read like another story of hers in Best American Short Stories 2011 about a daughter who can’t identify her mother’s body. Another story in the collection that I didn’t feel too enthused about was ‘Art of the Steal’ by Joshuah Bearman mainly due to the same pitfalls of Oats’ story, in that it didn’t do anything fresh with the genre. Overall, however, I enjoyed the variety, and many of the stories.
 
Final Rating: 4/5
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Maxwell Suzuki is a writer, poet, and photographer based in Los Angeles.

    Archives

    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021

    Categories

    All
    1/5
    1.5/5
    2/5
    2.5/5
    3/5
    3.5/5
    4/5
    4.5/5
    5/5
    Ada Limón
    Ada Zhang
    Aldous Huxley
    Alexander Chee
    Ali Araghi
    Anne Lamott
    Austin Kleon
    Brandon Taylor
    Brett Biebel
    Brit Bennett
    Cathy Park Hong
    Chen Chen
    Colson Whitehead
    Comic
    Cormac McCarthy
    Dang Thuy Tram
    Delia Owens
    Devon Capizzi
    Dianne Suess
    Elie Wiesel
    Esteban Rodriguez
    Faith Shearin
    Fiction
    Garth Greenwell
    George Watsky
    Hanya Yanagihara
    Interview
    James Baldwin
    Jean Kwok
    John Green
    Joy Kogawa
    Juhea Kim
    Julie Otsuka
    June Jordan
    Katsu Kokichi
    Kaveh Akbar
    Kenzaburō Ōe
    Kiese Laymon
    K-Ming Chang
    L.A. Johnson
    Lan Samantha Chang
    Ling Ma
    Madeline Miller
    Magazine
    Marc Lamont Hill
    Masaki Fujihata
    Matthew Salesses
    Michelle Zauner
    Morgan Talty
    Nardine Taleb
    Natalie Diaz
    Natsuo Kirino
    Non Fiction
    Ocean Vuong
    Photography
    Poetry
    Rafael Zepeda
    Richard Phillips
    Sally Rooney
    Sarah Fawn Montgomery
    Sequoia Nagamatsu
    Stephan Talty
    Stephen King
    Steven Pressfield
    Tracy K. Smith
    Translation
    Truman Capote
    Victoria Chang
    Viet Thanh Nguyen
    William Maxwell
    Yoko Ogawa
    Yoshiko Uchida
    Yukio Mishima

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.