I had a good time with this one. I’m not sure there was any story that knocked me out (perhaps because I’m sharpening my sense of what knocks me out – a combination of emotional impact, plus a technical twist and some sense of gravitas), but there were several I liked very much, and nothing felt like a dud. In fact, my least favorite part was the Preface/Intro.
I’m glad I got to know Caitlin Horrocks a little better (I encountered three of her stories virtually at the same time, including “Sleep” from this volume). I feel bad that I didn’t appreciate Claire Keegan’s “Foster” as much as most people have, and I feel downright stupid that I still haven’t got the hang of Steven Millhauser.
My favorites: “Property” by Elizabeth McCracken, “To The Measures Fall” by Richard Powers, and “The Hare’s Mask” by Mark Slouka. Several others came close: “Dog Bites” by Ricardo Nuila, Jess Row’s “The Call of Blood,” and “The Sleep” by Caitlin Horrocks.
My least favorite list: uh oh, here I’m going to expose my idiocy. Yes, Steven Millhauser, “Phantoms,” which is also in the Pushcart 2012 anthology. Ok, I admit it, I have no taste. And George Saunders, “Escape from Spiderhead,” just felt like a rehash of Clockwork Orange crossed with that experiment where students were asked to give electrical shocks to subjects just to see if they’d do. Both were interesting reads, and in neither case did I wonder why they were included.
For all the fuss about plot and looking beyond domestic realism, most of the stories were, in fact, domestic realism. Even Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “Ceiling,” set in Nigeria and dealing with financial success, is largely romance gone bad. But there were exceptions: Caitlin Horrocks’ “The Sleep” dealt with reactions to economic hardship, “Free Fruit for Young Widows” by Nathan Englander could only have been set in Israel, Lipsyte put a spin on adolescent angst by setting it in a computer game, and the Saunders was sci-fi psych. And Steven Millhauser and Ricardo Nuila provided a touch of strange.
I love BASS, and I’m already looking forward to September or October or whenever the 2012 edition comes out.
A Just Recompense 