Suzanne's Reviews > The Best Small Fictions 2015

I followed guest editor Robert Olen Butler's recommendation to take my time, reading only "a few at a sitting." Although many of these short short stories cover less than a page -- the shortest is a Twitter story -- they are all dense with feeling, and packed with potent images. Among my favorites are "Scarlet Fever" by Stefanie Freele, in which sickness becomes surreal; "The Intended," by Dawn Raffel, which captures the weirdness of preemies exhibited in incubators during the World's Fair; Misty Shipman Ellingburg's 100-word "Chicken Dance," about a disappointing hook-up with a Native American singer; Bobbie Ann Mason's "The Canyon Where the Coyotes Live" which concerns a woman with cats who longs for a child; and best-selling Japanese novelist Hiromi Kawakami's delightfully quirky "Banana," introducing the failed entrepreneur Uncle Red Shoes who once managed a factory that manufactured stuffed toy eels, among other things. This is a wonderful beginning to a new series, and the stories are the perfect length for busy people.