>The Missing Link Project: The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien

>I had read parts of this book before, including the title story, which is widely anthologized. I’d also heard the author read the book’s…

>The Missing Link Project: Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson

>I first read Jesus’s Son in 2000 (it first appeared in 1992) and my reaction at the time was simple: I hated it. What…

>The Missing Link Project: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

>Elizabeth Strout is a fine, fine writer, and I’m not just saying that because she wrote a nice blurb for my book, In an…

>The Missing Link Project: Dubliners by James Joyce

>The linkages in James Joyce’s Dubliners are a bit harder to see than those of some of the modern linked story collections or even…

>The Missing Link Project: The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank

>I won’t deny that The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank was entertaining, in the way a mindless romantic comedy is…

>The Missing Link Project: Later, at the Bar by Rebecca Barry

>There’s one terrific story in Rebecca Barry’s Later, at the Bar, which is supposed to be a novel in stories, according to the cover….

>The Missing Link Project: Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock

>There is a disappointing sameness to the stories in Knockemstiff, Donald Ray Pollock’s collection, which in no way is a novel, although that’s what…

>The Missing Link Project

>I’ve been thinking a lot lately about linked short story collections (or story cycles, or novels in stories), partly because my recently published book,…