In ‘Black-Eyed Women’, the opening story of Nguyen’s The Refugees, the ghost of a ghostwriter’s brother turns up still dressed as he was on the day he died.
While two of the writers here have roots elsewhere (Viet Thanh Nguyen was born in Vietnam, and Ottessa Moshfegh’s parents hail from Croatia and Iran), the stories in these fierce, tender books capture the American experience, each providing snapshots of a fragmented society undergoing great change. I t might be premature to herald another renaissance of the American short story, but after books such as last year’s Prodigals by Greg Jackson and Scary Old Sex by Arlene Heyman, and the appearance of these four collections in the first two months of 2017, one might be allowed to entertain the notion seriously.
