This was probably the best Valentine's present ever. Almost 600 pages of classic and not-so-classic love stories, carefully edited by Eugenides, who is officially the best short-story anthology editor I've ever encountered (and not a half-bad novelist, either). The stories deal with "love" in all its forms, from lust to infatuation to romance to real true commitment, in marriage and outside marriage, old, young, beautiful and wince-inducing. Recommended to the married folks mostly. (Probably not a book to hand to your teenager, either.)

Like in any anthology, there will be favorite stories and, let’s say, less-favorites. My rating is based on the ratio; I’d say I thoroughly enjoyed about half. I was a little disappointed—there are a million permutations of love, and therefore a million possible permutations of the love story. Yet, these stories were overwhelmingly of the Emotionally Repressed White Male variety. I can see this being dismissed as a “PC complaint”—and that’s part of it, I guess. But this book is almost 600 pages and 27 stories long, so there was plenty of space to include other types or circumstances of love. There’s nothing wrong with that type of story, and most of them were very good, but when you would finally stumble on something different—Eileen Chang’s story, or Miranda July’s—it was just a refreshing change. (Variety is the spice of life!)

I’d still recommend this book, though, especially to catch these standouts:

“Some Other, Better Otto” by Deborah Eisenberg
“The Hitchhiking Game,” by Milan Kundera
“Mouche,” by Guy de Maupassant
“How to be an Other Woman,” by Lorrie Moore
“Jon,” by George Saunders
“Red Rose, White Rose,” by Eileen Chang
“Something that Needs Nothing,” by Miranda July
“The Bear Came Over the Mountain,” by the incomparable Alice Munro

In My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead: Great Love Stories, from Chekhov to Munro, Jeffrey Eugenides basically asked a bunch of people what their favorite story about love was; he asked his cool writer friends, cab drivers, people they entertained, really anyone he talked to and then compiled those stories, weeded through them and came up with what is in this book.

It's a good mix of stories, some lovely, some sad, some funny, some disturbing, some just agonizing, but all about love. They range in subject from first loves to stories of infidelities. There were maybe 2 stories (out of the 27) that I didn't really care for. Overall it's an exceptional collection.

**(And hey, all of the proceeds from the sale of this book go directly to the funding of the free youth-writing programs offered by 826 Chicago.)**

It is perhaps only in reading a love story (or in writing one) that we can simultaneously partake in the ecstasy and agony of being in love without paying a crippling emotional price. (p.xvii)

i have a hard time rating this book as a whole. some of the stories made me cry. others made me want to skip to the next one. some i had already encountered in another life.

i couldn't stop reading this book. i couldn't stop re-reading the stories. reading them aloud to my boyfriend. watching the look on his face to see if they resonated as strongly with him. it was beautiful. and it was heart-breaking. and it hurt. i felt so dreadful after reading some of them, like it was me this was happening to. these stories held my attention in some odd way.

i will never forget some of them. the hitchhiking game. spring in fialta. spring in fialta fixes everything.


i'm going to re-read this soon.

I read a few and didn't feel the need to read more.

I FINALLY finished this book after like...over a year or something. A long time. And even though it took me so long, I recommend reading it the way I did - spaced out. This collection is so awesome that I wouldn't want the stories blurring together in my memory. They're all so different and amazing for very different reasons.

Out of all the stories in the book, there were probably only two that I didn't care for. And even those weren't terrible - they just didn't make me feel as much as the others did.

One story from the collection, "How to Be an Other Woman" by Lorrie Moore, quickly joined my list of favorite short stories of all time. And several others I already knew and loved, such as Chekhov's classic "The Lady with the Little Dog."

But even beyond the genius of the stories in the collection, the introduction itself is worth the cost of the book in itself. Eugenides manages to tie all the stories together and effectively explain why a collection of love stories ends up including so many tales of woe, rather than a bunch of fluffy, lovey-dovey, happy-ending stories.

HOWEVER, if you're like me and don't like to know anything about the stories before you read them, I'd recommend reading his introduction AFTER you finish the book. I did it this way, and it was a fantastic ending to such an enjoyable year-long read.

Because Jeffrey Eugenides takes his sweet time between writing incredible novels, when I heard there was a short story compilation edited by him it was purchased on my amazon account and being shipped to my house as fast as my fingers could go.

After reading the first few stories I began to get worried. I didn't bother to read what the theme of the compilation was when I purchased--his name was enough for me. But the first few stories (by some of the 'classics'--Faulkner, Joyce...) had me terrified I had signed up for something I was not interested in at the least.

Thankfully, those stories were at the front of the book, and just like trudging down your veggies before you can have dessert, the book got way better.

I'm a completionist, I'm a person who needs o finish books, so I can't recommend skipping the first few stories...but if you can hold out it will be worth it!

this had been on my to-read list since last valentine's day and came up at just the right time for some head in the clouds reading nearly a full calendar year later. most of these stories (saunders, carver, july) i'd read in other collections. as far as 826 anthologies go, it was just okay and i'm sort of happy to move on to something else.