Read a story a day with these collections of shorts. Danielle Evans explores race and girls entering adulthood in Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, and Aryn Kyle, author of The God of Animals, also writes coming of age tales, though some of her characters are well past early adulthood. You sense they’re seeking ownership, or some sort of revelation in the everyday.
In Gryphon, Charles Baxter develops each character better than the last as they navigate new territory and relationships. In the brilliant title story, the students of one classroom spend a few days with an eccentric substitute teacher they’ll never forget. Under her tutelage, we see traditional lesson plans flipped on their head, questioning the mundane composition of school curriculum.
In Binocular Vision, Edith Pearlman, winner of the 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction and a National Book Award finalist, straddles continents with prose that is sensory wish fulfillment. The writing is as sophisticated as the cover. So go ahead and judge it.
