The Best American Short Stories 1996: Selected from U.S. and Canadian Magazines

Each fall The Best American Short Stories provides a fresh showcase for the rich and unpredictable story form. Selected from an unusually wide variety of publications, John Edgar Wideman's choices for 1996 place stories from esteemed magazines alongside selections from some of the smallest and most innovative literary journals.
Among the dazzling new stories from favorite authors is Mary Gordon's "Intertextuality", in which a sentence by Proust propels the narrator into an intricate portrait of her Irish American grandmother. From Robert Olen Butler comes the wry and warm tale "Jealous Husband Returns in Form of Parrot", in which a man learns the consequences of marital distrust. In "Complicities", Alice Adams with her customary finesse contrasts the stinging vulnerability of early adolescence with the burdens and pleasures of midlife.