7 Short-Story Collections for Short Attention Spans
If you, like us, have been struggling to make it through more ambitious reading material lately, it might be time to consider a short story. Sure, they might not give you the sense of accomplishment you’d feel tearing through a tome, but they are economical, transportive vehicles all on their own — and the important thing is to be able to take your mind off the present, even if only for a moment. Below, some suggestions for story collections to hold your attention.
Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte
Technically a “novel in stories,” Tony Tulathimutte’s new book Rejection contains seven tales of porn addicts, losers, and outsiders. Their foibles are impossible to look away from or stop yourself from laughing at (you might even find them strangely relatable). Start with “The Feminist” and then check out what Reddit and 4chan had to say about it. — Jordan Larson, features editor
Heathcliff Redux: A Novella and Stories by Lily Tuck
In Heathcliff Redux, National Book Award winner Lily Tuck revisits the gothic romance of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights to tell the deliciously spare story of a Kentucky wife and mother having an affair with a seemingly dangerous man. Formally inventive, the novella and following short stories are erotic, unforgiving, and pack a punch in very, very few words. —Brock Colyar, features writer
The Bed Moved by Rebecca Schiff
When I read Rebecca Schiff’s The Bed Moved when it came out in 2016, I remember thinking it was my ideal collection. The main narrator, an irreverent 20-something woman with a very dark sense of humor, is hilarious; the stories are simply a joy to read. In particular, I remember one in which she stumbles upon one of her dead father’s favorite porn sites, which gives her troubling insight into what got her dad off (topless women boxing). If that narrative appeals to you, I’d recommend picking it up. —Amanda Arnold, former Cut writer
The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg
There are many moments in Deborah Eisenberg’s short stories, when, in an instant of knifeblade concision, it becomes clear that all is not as it appears to be. “I had never known what I was like until I stopped smoking,” opens “Days,” the first story Eisenberg ever wrote, “by which time there was hell to pay for it.” Charlotte, the narrator of Eisenberg’s first published story, “Flotsam,” which became the opener of her 1986 collection, Transactions in a Foreign Currency, is either tall or ungainly, depending whose sightlines she happens to reside in. (As her boyfriend falls out of love with her, “my athletic tallness, which Robert had admired when we met, with the dissolving of his affection came to feel like an untended sprawl.”)
These hairpin turns of recalibration are Eisenberg’s specialty. Her occasions can be mundane or cataclysmic — a breakup and scene change in “Flotsam” or 9/11 in “Twilight of the Superheroes” — but she understands that all turbulence is turbulence, and the global and the personal burble between the two. “It’s very, very, very difficult for people, particularly people with a certain level of comfort or privilege, to take in the reality of a situation,” Eisenberg told the New York Times Magazine in 2018, when the magazine celebrated her as a “chronicler of American insanity.” She’s a slow, methodical writer; each story apparently takes her a year. I’d call them jewels, but that doesn’t seem hard enough, sharp enough. They’re gems.
—Matthew Schneier, restaurant critic
Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom by Sylvia Plath
Written for Mademoiselle when the poet was a student at Smith College in 1952, the short story was later rejected and published for the first time, in its original, “sinister” form in 2019. The story of a young girl on a mysterious train ride, it is a quick, suspenseful read with a very Plathian story line and surprisingly light-hearted ending. You’ll wonder for weeks what the hell it was actually about (and maybe it’s about hell?). —B.C.
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One: 1929–1964 edited by Robert Silverberg
I know some people look down their noses at “best of” albums and greatest hits collections, but those people need to hop off their high horses. Here are 26 of the greatest English-language sci-fi stories ever written. I couldn’t pick one favorite, they’re all excellent. “Coming Attraction” hits differently now — it’s set in a dystopic future in which all American women wear face masks, all the time. —Rachel Bashein, managing editor
The Soho Press Book of ‘80s Short Fiction edited by Dale Peck
During the pandemic, in an effort to put a dividing line between “staring at the news on my phone time” and “fitfully nodding off to sleep time,” I tried reading a single story from this anthology every night before going to bed. It’s full of classics from Raymond Carver and Amy Hempel, plus weirder, harder to find work by writers like Rebecca Brown, Robert Glück, and David Wojnarowicz. Open it up and you’re not sure what you’ll find — one of the best stories ever written about grief or a diaristic novella called “Weird Fucks”? —J.L.
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