New Yorker Stories of the Year
For the past several years, I’ve been asking readers to vote on the New Yorker Story of the Year. It’s fun, but meaningless. Emphasis on the meaningless. Instead, let me just tell you what my favorite stories of the year are. If you have other favorites, or reactions to my picks, please do leave a comment below. The links are to the discussion of the story on this blog:
Tessa Hadley: Experience
Paul Theroux: I’m the Meat, You’re the Knife
Joyce Carol Oates: Mastiff
Sherman Alexie: Happy Trails
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi: Checking Out
What were your favorites?
Ah, my favorite time of your blogging year – and the reason I started reading TNY in the first place. As usual, I’ll defend a few unusual picks:
Romesh Gunesekera: “Roadkill” – this really interested me in a subject I’d never thought much about before; every detail is carefully constructed. Maybe a little too carefully, but still. Like with Mackin, I ended up appreciating the difficult path he took me on.
Paul Theroux: “I’m the Meat, You’re the Knife” – this grew a lot on second read. Or maybe I did. Either way, it’s a quality I’ve come to appreciate in a story.
Joshua Ferris: “The Breeze” – Whether you call it cubism or parallel universes, I love the narrative fragmentation of reality.
David Gilbert: “From a Farther Room” – Part of my enjoyment of this story is in Scott Musgrove’s illustration, but I’ve grown quite fond of the way Gilbert lays out a story that doesn’t mean much to me, then turns me to jelly at the very end. And I’ve always been sucker for Prufrock.
Tobias Wolff: “All Ahead of Them” – I liked the complicated psychological relationship explored.
Will Mackin: “Kattekoppen” – I’m not a fan of war stories, and this one took a lot of work to follow (he packed a lot into it), but in the end, I ended up appreciating the path.
I also liked the most recent Millhauser – “Coming Soon” – a lot more than most others, but it didn’t have the complexity of these.
The story that stuck with me the longest was “The Breeze” by Joshua Ferris.