Really great collection of short stories, from a wide variety of authors. This is the second book of short stories I’ve read this year, and I have to say I’m sort of craving picking up another soon… I have both an anthology about stories relating to the ocean as well as a Lovecraft short story book on my TBR, so maybe I’ll take a look at one of those in a month or two.

Really there was only one story in here that I didn’t like, which was “The Inherited Clock” by Elizabeth Bowen. The language in the story was completely overblown, and to be honest, I couldn’t make heads or tails of what was happening. Nor did I want to pick it apart and figure out what Bowen was going for, because of the language… Sort of a vicious circle.

My top picks in here would be “Roman Fever” by Edith Wharton, “Smokers” by Tobias Wolff, and “Mary Postgate” by Rudyard Kipling. That ending in the Kipling story… wow. I was also really happy to finally read a bit of Raymond Carver (“Fat”), who was a great inspiration to one of my top literary loves, Haruki Murakami. (Murakami, by the by, was one of Carver’s Japanese translators.) All of which reminds me that I actually have a short story collection by Carver on my bookshelf too…

Anyway, I really recommend this anthology for anyone who wants to consider the seven deadly sins from a literary angle.