
At best, a short story can only approach perfection, never attain it. A novella has to be perfect. A novel has to be a sprawling mess. I am thinking of these things as I walk around my neighborhood in Bombay. The streets are wet from the first monsoon showers, which abated only half an hour…

Beth Wolpert was bragging about her son James’s old high school accomplishments again. Sitting at the VFW, waiting for another Natural Ice, she went on about how he won senior class president, how handsome he was and how many girls she used to catch him with when he thought she was working. “Once,” she started,…

They lay flattened on the beach, pinned down by the gravity of the things they longed for, as the house fell slowly into the sea.

One of our most read short stories of all time.