There’s an enviable fearlessness to Watkins’ writing, a refusal to look away from the despair that lies within the hearts of her lost and weary characters, to give them tidy trajectories or tidy resolutions. The Top Ten Claire Vaye Watkins, BattlebornĬlaire Vaye Watkins’ searing, Nevada-set debut collection-which includes a sixty-page novella that takes place during the 1848 Gold Rush and a dazzling, devastating opening tale in which Watkins audaciously blends fiction, local history, and myth with the story of father’s involvement in the Manson Family during the late ’60s-is as starkly beautiful, as lonesome and sinister and death-haunted, as the desert frontier through which its stories roam.
Feel free to add any favorites we’ve missed in the comments below. And as you’ll shortly see, we had a hard time choosing just ten-so we’ve also included a list of dissenting opinions, and an even longer list of also-rans. Tears were spilled, feelings were hurt, books were re-read. The following books were chosen after much debate (and several rounds of voting) by the Literary Hub staff. We began with the best debut novels of the decade, and now we’re back with the best short story collections of the decade-or to be precise, the best collections published in English between 20. We will do this, of course, by means of a variety of lists.
So, as is our hallowed duty as a literary and culture website-though with full awareness of the potentially fruitless and endlessly contestable nature of the task-in the coming weeks, we’ll be taking a look at the best and most important (these being not always the same) books of the decade that was.
We’ll take our silver linings where we can. It’s been a difficult, anxiety-provoking, morally compromised decade, but at least it’s been populated by some damn fine literature. Friends, it’s true: the end of the decade approaches.
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