For clarity, I’m talking about short story collections by a **single author that are published as such.**
Whenever I read short story collections, I usually walk away with mixed feelings. I love short stories as a literary form; I served as a literary review editor and read some truly magnificent pieces in this form. However, when they’re in a collection it seems like authors sometimes put in underdeveloped or poorer quality work just to add length to the book.
In general, when I read short-story collections, my assessment usually looks something like this:
* A few stories that are solid, polished, and perfectly suited for the short story format
* A few stories that showcase promising or interesting writing, but then just sort of end after 20 pages because it seems like the author doesn’t know how to end them
* A few stories that are decent, but are in need of some more editing
* A few stories that feel like discarded novel ideas
* A few stories that feel like the author is experimenting with a new form or style, for better or for worse.
Do you try to look for a unifying theme or pattern in all of the stories? Or do you consider them more as a collection of disparate stories?
Do you have any favorite short story collections? Or short story collections filled with such varying quality or range that you can’t believe a single author wrote all of them?
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by [deleted]