The very first story in the collection by Leon Driskell was delicious and perfect. As I read on I could not believe that, one after another, the choices that make this book are equal to the first one. As a regular reader of the Houghton-Mifflin Best American Short Stories annual, I have come to accept that what makes a great collection is a great editor. If you want to see what I mean, look at Anne Beattie's volume, or John Updike's, or John Gardner's; these editors know what makes a story great. The same is true of Anne Tyler, and in each of these stories we see what makes her writing remarkable: development of engaging characters. The primary focus in all of these stories is on character, but you will also find that these stories appeal to us on a human interest level and as lovers of writing. If you are interested in reading and/or writing good fiction, this is a book to read.

This is the best collection of short stories I've read in recent memory. Two favorites are "The Birds for Christmas," by Mark Richard and "The Rain of Terror" by Frank Manley, but almost all typify the finest in short story writing today.

I love this book and I find myself dipping back into it over and over for some favorites ("Charlotte" by Tony Earley is a classic). I took the book on my honeymoon and it is part of the reason why I remember that as such a wonderful time. There really is something here for everybody: memorable characters, quiet and not-so-quiet human drama, and -- that gorgeous language! A must-have for fans of Southern fiction.

Crash Diet reveals McCorkle's strengths as a writer of the New South, which I first enjoyed several years ago in July 7th and Tending to Virginia. It's like I was never gone; her comic style intertwines effortlessly with the truly sympathetic in this collection of short fiction. There are lots of voices here, all of women grappling with changes in their lives that have brought chaos, rather than order. The pieces were written across a span of years and the author's propensity to drop topical references to our disposable culture can be a little distracting when moving from one story to another, as you inevitably pause to recall just when "Falcon Crest" or "The New Newlyweds Game" was hot. But that's just a little itch, and it doesn't date the material.

I found "Crash Diet" in a pile of books and was intrigued by the title. It was a collection of short stories by a southern writer. Usually, with a collection of stories - there is sure to be a couple that you don't care for - but not with this collection.

Each female protagonist was her own charachter. I felt as though I knew each one of them through Ms. McCorkle's description and characterization. Some funny, some sad - all uniquely interesting.

I highly reccomend this book.

I loved the many stories in this book. The protagonists are all female, but they are of different ages, situations and dilemmas. Jill McCorkle shows a lot of humor and wisdom in telling their stories.

I've read every Stories from the South collection published (since 1986). Each year there are famous contributors. 2002 includes a first-rate piece by Romulus Linney "Tennessee" and Doris Betts continues giving readers her literary gems with "Aboveground." And there are those who have not won as much critical attention. Up-and-coming George Singleton's "Show-and-Tell" was one of the funniest pieces in the collection, and Aaron Gwyn's "Of Falling" was probably one of the most powerful. The contributions by David Koon, Dwight Allen, and Julie Orringer also desrve mention for their technical and thematic brilliance. This collection has pieces to tug the heartstrings in every direction.

Four stars because, like usual, this collection delivers wonderful and varied pieces; however, I took a star off (please note it was only one star) because there were a few sub-par pieces. Kate Small's "Maximum Sunlight" seemed only tangentially "from the South" as it was set in Washington, DC; moreover, it was overtly politcal at the cost of artistic merit, crying "Im southern too" too loudly. Bill Roorbach's "Big Bend" was a geographically interesting setting but poorly executed; the voice felt inauthentic, especially the hackneyed, non-native way he deployed "y'all." Similarly, Lucia Nevai's "Faith Healer" dragged through stereotypes until some racist Yankees found closure.

This is the first installment of this well-respected series that I have read - and I'm impressed. It's definitely a feast - so I won't apologize for the 'title' above. I won't try to tell you that I absolutely loved everything in this book - but I found several that blew me away, and I've added a few authors to my 'seek further' list as a result.

I've been a huge fan of William Gay ever since I first read any of his work - and his story 'Charting the territories of the red' in this volume is no disappointment. I'll pick up anything I see by him without question. New discoveries (and I'm speaking for myself here...) in this volume include Romulus Linney (his story 'Tennessee' here is simply amazing); Dwight Allen (who contributes 'End of the steam age'; Aaron Gwyn, a promising young talent ('Of falling'); and the incredible 'Rat spoon' by Dulane Upshaw Ponder. Also notable is R. T. Smith's 'I have lost my right'; the dark 'Beneath the deep, slow motion' by Brad Barkley; Bill Roorbach's touching 'Big Bend'; and another very dark tale, 'The bone divers', by David Koon.

The other stories here are all well written - these are simply the ones that touched me most deeply. Some of them are so good they made my mouth drop open from time to time. I'll definitely be checking out some of the other volumes in this series, as well as some of the works by the authors I mentioned above - some of them have novels or collections forthcoming.

Every year, I purchase New Stories from the South, but I always buy last year's, in paperback, then I might take another few months to read it. So I've just finished the 2000 issue and will start on 2001 one of these days (I have it in my pile of books somewhere). I never regret having purchased or read these anthologies. They always include good writers, both new and familiar, and the stories are an interesting combination of themes, locales and styles. The South is a part, sometimes subtle, but always there, and the characters are seldom sterotypical, their stories never trite. Pick up any of these issues. The stories are timeless.

One wonders a bit at the subtitle: The Year's Best, 2000, and then one remembers this collection, the latest in a long line of such anthologies stretching back to the 1980's, was edited by Algonquin Books' Shannon Ravenel, and she knows more about these things probably than anybody else.

Nevertheless, I would call this a mixed bag of Southern storytelling. Allan Gurganus's "He's at the Office" has a clever premise, one familiar to anyone from a close-knit, aging family, and once again showcases Gurganus's sharp eye for detail and razzmatazz prose style, but the ending is silly and the story collapses because of it. R.H.W. Dillard's "Forgetting the End of the World" seems much ado about nothing and strains for a significance it most certainly does not achieve. These are two of the weaker links in the chain. Among the stronger ones are "Mr. Puniverse", a marvelous comedy of unrequited passion, Romulus Linney's "The Widow", which has the rhythm and cadence of a good Appalachian folk ballad, Melanie Sumner's "Good Hearted Woman", the book's longest piece and most obvious crowd pleaser, about a young woman's confrontations with work, love, and family, and Margie Rabb's "How to Tell a Story," my own favorite of the bunch, and an incisive, very moving, and all-too-true look at the dog eat dog world of university creative writing programs and one young writer's determination to tell stories despite what happens to her and the stories she tells.

This is an attractively designed paperback. Each story ends with an author biography, with the writer revealing why he/she wrote that particular story.

This review is certainly belated, but the 1996 collection of New Stories from the South is worthy of review nevertheless. The curiosity of the collection is William Faulkner's "Rose of Lebanon", a story written in 1930, but only recently rediscovered and published in The Oxford American, thus "qualifying" it (as if there are judges standing by with little cups for the various stories to pee in?) for inclusion in this year's anthology. Although Kirkus Reviews and Booklist hail the rediscovery, I have to think there must have been a good reason Faulkner himself did not pursue its publication more actively. While the plot and characterisations are admirable, there is a certain awkwardness about how the tale is told. Consider the following sentence, "She looked like something made in an expensive shop, of lace and bright frosting, and turned upside down in the center of a hollow square of troops all young and none of whom had ever heard a bullet; by strange faces which, for all their youth and inexperience and perhaps foreboding, wore none the less of doubt for that." Beautiful writing indeed, but that is supposed to be a line of dialogue. Also: "They all galloped bareheaded with brandished sabres when they had them, but anyway galloping, off the stage altogether, into a lot more rain than a December drizzle; maybe into somewhere else where they could bang themselves to pieces again, like puppets banging themselves to pieces against the painted board-and-plaster, the furious illusions of gardens and woods and dells; maybe to meet brighter faces than Lewis Randolph looking out a carriage window halted in a muddy road." True, the South has a long tradition of storytelling and oratory which Faulkner, via the speaker, is clearly tapping in to; but it all seems a bit much for believable dialogue. I grew up in the South, and although I love run-on sentences more than most, I've never heard anyone talk like that. But this is a minor quibble, and the story is certainly worth a read, as are all the stories in the book. Tim Gautreaux's "Died and Gone to Vegas" taps into the modern tradition of Southern Oratory--lies told over a card table; and while, like many of the stories, it is afflicted with a touch of the stereotypical view of Southerners as trailor trash, is nonetheless equally amusing and touching. My favorite story is "Jealous Husband Returns in the Form of a Parrot" by Robert Olen Butler. Inspired by a tabloid headline, what seems to be an absurd idea actually takes on poignancy and becomes a surreal study of regret. Susan Perabo's "Some Say the World", Annette Sanford's "Goose Girl", and Lee Smith's "The Happy Memories Club" all portray female protagonists at odds with the world and making their place in it as best they can. Ellen Douglas's "Grant" rings with the truth of lost chances, when the narrator's husband's uncle, dying of cancer, moves in with them to live out his remaining days.

Most problematic was Tom Paine's "General Markman's Last Stand", which Kirkus Reviews pans as "simply unconvincing." There is certainly an aspect of the story than makes it seem that Paine began with a vision of the final scene and worked backward from there. But in some ways it is the most intriguing of the bunch--suggesting rather than telling. Markman is a Marine general at the point of retirement who has earned the respect of his men by falling on a grenade (which turned out not to be live) in Vietnam. He has a dark secret, though--he has a fetish for women's lingerie, and the shame of his fetish drives him to self-destructive behaviour. The cause-and-effect of Markham's life is not clear. Paine hints that his fetish developed in the battlefields of Vietnam, where his wife's underwear (originally sent as a reminder of her?) took on a totemic power providing for his personal safety, and that Markham's valiant grenade dive was actually an attempt to destroy himself. Markham finally manages at least professional self-destruction, but somehow Paine's story doesn't quite come off. Perhaps it is as simple as needing to know what happened next. But it certainly has one of the most shocking opening lines I've read, "The General's panties were too tight."

If the 1996 anthology is any measure of the quality of the whole, New Stories from the South is a series to watch out for. 15 stories and not a bit of absurd gunplay, just touching or amusing slices of Southern Life.

It's been a while since I read this, and this is just my opinion, but I was disappointed with this one. I'd read the 1990, 1991, and 1992 editions previously, and I thoroughly enjoyed them.

I have read probably, (literally) 100 anthologies of short stories and this is the best I have ever had the pleasure of reading. Admittedly, Best New Stories from the South is my favorite yearly anthology. It presents the most consistent quality of stories each year. This is the best that I have read. Each story is powerful and distinct from the others. To me, the mark of a good short story is when you must put down the book after finishing it and think. Every story in this collection is that good. This book, hopefully, will hook you on the series.

This whole thing and its predecessors are mighty depressing. Sometime in the 1960's short story writing slipped out of the hands of adults who had actually gone out in the world and held jobs and had families and thus had something to write about, and into the hands of graduate students. These workshop set pieces are dreadful and depressing and have little or nothing to do with the South, The exceptions -- Ellen Douglas stands out -- are too few and far between to make these books worthwhile. Stock up on Lewis Grizzard or Jeff Foxworthy instead and buy John Cheever's Collected Stories if you really want to see how it's done.

I've read 3-4 previous editions of "New Stories From the South", and this was probably my least favorite. There were some good moments, and some good writing, but nevertheless, I got to the end of some stories and thought "Huh?". Then again, as another reviewer says, some of that could possibly be attributed to what's 'hip' in short stories these days. A former co-worker said he thought that some stories being published these days were 'the literary equivalent of modern art'.

As with all the books in this series, this collection shows how vibrant, diverse and rich the short story form remains in the United States, and how Southerners are pushing the form. Ravenel, who had a lot to do with the short story renaissance during the 1980s as editor of Best American Short Stories, has a truly fine eye. I highly recommend this one.

This was one of the worst books I have read in my life. I suffered through the book hoping that the stories would get better as the years progressed. The majority of the stories had no real plot. The tales just end as abruptly and as strangely as they began. The stories from the early '80's are so bizarre...you have to be on the same drugs that the author was on when he/she wrote it to enjoy or understand the story. I guess these stories are emblematic of the decade. I was disappointed since these stories were supposedly culled from all the other ones of the decade to comprise "the best of". Surely the editor could have done better!

Of all the shortstories I have read, my personal favorite is in this book. It's a story called Griffin and it is fantastic. There are other good stories in the book but that one story alone makes the book well worth it's price.