HONEYDEW

The title story of this new book, “Honeydew,” which Tom Perotta selected for Best American Short Stories, is full of event: an affair, an illegitimate pregnancy, anorexia, adolescent drug use, and a fascinating entomology lesson, all in 15 pages. While that is the case with some others too, there are probably an equal number where most of the events are exquisitely on the inside, with an intricate mapping of the characters’ interiority. But the foremost reason I love Edith’s work, and the reason I think so many readers respond to it, is that she is wise. She’s like a favorite aunt, seeing us simultaneously as we are and as we wish to be. Successes such as George Saunders’s Tenth of December and Juhmpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth prove that it isn't impossible to make a story collection a bestseller. In the last couple of years there’s been great attention for story collections from Nathan Englander, Karen Russell, Lorrie Moore, and others.