And please don’t ask why (but by all means offer dissenting opinions). I’d have to go back to re-read them and I am not sure I want to invest the time.

I do agree that the “whirl” factor is what is missing from these stories. I contemplated trying to explain the title in the original review (Wangersky hints at it in his epigraph “For Leslie, who whirls”) but didn’t want to extend the review. For what it is worth, I think the title is an apt description of a common theme in the successful stories of the book, but you don’t realize that until you have completed it.

The stories that work do “whirl” either with an outrageous premise at the start or (more frequently) a development that occurs during the story. The ones that were less impressive for me were more like the dodg’ems at McNally’s Fair than the roller-coaster.

One thing that impacted my response to the “family law” set was that, relatively speaking, the dramatic element is less extreme; after the horrors of the earlier stories, the life of a divorce attorney seemed tame, whereas in another context, I might have responded differently. I did appreciate the irony atop irony detail at the end, and I absolutely love it when stories intersect so when I recognized that happening later in the collection I got a little thrill from it, but in discussing the collection as a whole it seemed misleading to draw attention to these because the “whirl” factor in the others was so much more pronounced. It makes me wonder how the ordering of the collection might have changed my expectations.

I used to follow and enjoy Trevor’s commentary but then I let my New Yorker sub lapse; maybe after prizelist season I’ll get back to that. But, oh, so many magazines. (A nice “problem” to have, really.)

Having said that, your comments about “Little World” illustrate my original point — when I was writing the review, it was either “Echo” or that one. And so far no one has found the “family law” set to be outstanding.

My fellow Shadow Giller judge Trevor at Mookse and Gripes runs a regular feature where he posts the short story (or stories) from the New Yorker each week. I commented early on in his project but have been a lurker ever since — the comments that he gets on his site show that there are some people at least who like to dive into the detail of any story that they read. I stopped commenting because I just don’t pay that amount of attention to a single short story. I have no complaint with those who do, but they read from a different perspective than I do.

What I think is particularly remarkable about this collection is that the pacing and characterization pulls the reader through consistently; even in the stories which I enjoyed less (we share one favourite: “Sharp Corner”); these are disturbing and unsettling situations and stories, but I wouldn’t have left any one of them unfinished.

I think it’s strange that when an author has published a dozen books, we expect to like some more than others; we are more likely to say that certain elements simply appealed to us more than others when speaking of a few favourites amongst a stack of books, and that doesn’t necessarily extend to the idea that those other books just weren’t as well written (though sometimes it does, too). But when speaking of stories in a collection, we expect to like them all equally, from beginning to end.

Do you think it might be harder to define the subjective elements in our responses to short stories than it is in considering our responses to novels, because as soon as we’ve responded positively to one of the stories we expect the same sort of response to all of the others?

I can see all the elements that you admire in “Echo” and I do think he maintains that perspective brilliantly, but I wouldn’t choose it as a favourite. Whereas, “Little World” really stands out for me, particularly the way that he writes the dialogue (perhaps I should say ‘monologue’) and paces the story with it and manages to hint at the little world beyond that single voice. The skill required for the two stories seems similar, requiring a balancing act between information seen and understood (in the boy’s POV) and the information shared or held back (in the woman’s POV), and I can imagine a little checklist of qualities with the same number of ticks for each of these stories, but I would still point to “Little World” first.

I do think that is the fate of most story collections — for all but a very few (Light Lifting, reviewed on this site, is one), I do find there is some variance in quality and I expect that. I suspect someone who is more devoted to the short story form than I am would experience that less often. He would have the ability to look at each story on its merits, while my inclindation is to look at the collection as a whole, acknowledging that I have my favorites.

Perhaps that explains why, even with story collections, I have a bias towards those featuring linked stories (The Meagre Tarmac and The View From Castle Rock are two reviewed here) — the stories add up to a whole. That, of course, is a self-defeating argument from me: I like them because they are more “novel-like” and I tend to judge them as a novel.

I don’t know how I feel about this. You’re absolutely right, but I’m having trouble accepting this kind of statement, which feels a bit like admitting that short story collections are always going to have duds. Not even relative duds – straight-up disappointing stories. Which is obviously not true, because some collections are very nicely consistent in their high quality. I guess it bothers me that we can forgive authors for writing a few bad short stories if they wrote a few more good stories… Anyways, I just don’t know what to think. Hence the rambling.