A short story I read many years ago has remained stuck in my mind but I cannot remember title or author. The author was female and the story was about a woman traveling to a remote desert home of an old man to check on his welfare. Beautifully written though I can't remember the plot or outcome. I had no idea this story would stay with me for so long or I would have written down title/author. Love the short stories of Hemingway though don't care much for his novels. Also, Bobbie Ann Mason writes an excellent short story.
I somehow forgot about Joseph Conrad, too...I think his novels are probably more famous, but personally I prefer his short stories. "Il Conde" and "The Secret Sharer" come to mind as particular favorites.
Anything in Aimee Bender's collection "Willful Creatures." Everything in there is just really really weird..
A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner really stuck with me for some reason. I can't say I "enjoyed" it, but the way it was written and how unsettled it made me feel makes it an effective work. So I love it for that.
I recently finished "Fortune Smiles" by Adam Johnson, which won the 2015 National Book Award for fiction--I believe it is the first short story collection ever to win the award. Disturbing content, fantastically written. Definitely worth your time.
If you like short stories all you need is Raymond Carver. His work changed how I look at writing and are really entertaining. The story "Little Things" I found particularly powerful. The last line is about as harrowing as any thing I've read. He is up there with my favorite writers.
Yep. But, also, check out William Trevor if you haven't read his works. He passed away a few years back. You can get his complete works. He (along with writers like Carver) is often mentioned among the greats of short fiction:
Anton Chekhov? Ernest Hemingway? Flannery O'Connor? Alice Munro? Edgar Allan Poe? Jorge Luis Borges? James Thurber? Hundreds of others? Raymond Carver is good, but he's certainly not all you need in short stories. There's a huge world of wonderful short stories out there!
Just saying that I am a big fan of his work. Obviously there are many other great short story writers. Didn't literally mean any one should only read Carver, you would miss out on a lot if you did
I've read a ton of H.P. Lovecraft's short stories, and even though The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, Dagoth, and the obligatory Call of Cthulu are all favorites, strangely enough its Nyarlathotep that really stuck with me. The last two paragraphs especially are just so...powerful? Invoking? I'm not sure, but the way that the whole short story accelerates and ups its scale as it goes sends shivers up my spine.
Sea Oak by George Saunders Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower The Life and Work of Alphonse Kauders by Aleksandar Hemon Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace The Sound Gun by Matthew Derby
The two most beautiful short stories I've ever read are The Darling by Chekhov and The Nose by Gogol, both for very different reasons. The Darling is a wonderful character study and extremely poignant while at the same time containing an extraordinarily dry sense of humor, and The Nose is surreal and vaguely manic, but wonderfully so. Chekhov seems to be the most level-headed of the Russian writers; lot of them are like Dostoevsky and Gogol, geniuses but madmen, not unlike DaVinci. Then you have the Turgenevs, the floral, arrogant upperclassmen who are good writers but think far too much of themselves. Then Chekhov is lovely middle ground and brings a sense of calm to the short stories, and practically every short story he's written is absolutely breathtaking.
The Short Happy Life is the first thing that popped in my head when I saw this title. Another short story is Tolstoy's Three Hermits. Also a bizarre one called The Outlaws by Selma Lagerlof
