You probably don’t subscribe to New Ohio Review so this is your chance to meet Darlyn, the lesbian
single Midwestern mom who works at Home Depot and is having an affair with Christy, a Lexus-driving, NPR-listening, married woman in Carol Anshaw’s “The Last Speaker of the Language” selected by Tom Perrotta in today's release of The Best American Short Stories 2012
[Kindle
]. As in her new novel Carry the One, Anshaw packs her story with difficult situations, wry observations, funny lines, and great secondary characters including the "beginning gay" Brad who isn't allowed to wear his glitter t-shirt at work; her daughter Lake; her brother Russ; and their drunk, shopaholic mother, Jackie.
The nineteen other stories are strong, if perhaps not life-changing, from Steven Millhauser, George Saunders, Mary Gaitskill, Nathan Englander, Edith Pearlman, Jennifer Haigh, Julie Otsuka, Kate Walbert, Adam Wilson, Jess Walter, and of course Alice Munro, who is mistakenly represented with "Axis" rather than her knockout "Gravel."
As ever the list of Other Distinguished Stories is crowded with favorite, underappreciated writers including Tom Drury
, Yannick Murphy
, Ron Carlson,
and Patrick Ryan's daring Tin House tale, "Which Way To the Osterling Cloud?"
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