The Best American Essays 2015

August 31, 2015
Assembled by New Yorker staff writer Levy (Female Chauvinist Pigs), the 30th Best American Essays collection maintains the series’ standards of excellence. The 22 contributors explore a wide range of experiences, with the theme of aging taking an especially prominent part. Ninety-three-year-old Roger Angell’s “This Old Man,” about the trials of old age, is poignant, funny, and surprisingly reassuring. Mark Jacobson’s (mostly) humorous observations in “Sixty-Five: Learning to Love Middle Old Age” have a similar effect. It is a sheer pleasure to read David Sedaris, still funny but less excitable, describe a life-affirming relationship with his Fitbit in “Stepping Out.” Also worth noting is Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Crooked Ladder,” a novel take on capitalism and institutional racism as seen through a comparison of Italian-American and African-American criminal enterprises. Novelist Justin Cronin covers the aftermath of his wife and daughter’s near-fatal car accident, Anthony Doerr imagines the lives of the first family to settle in his hometown of Boise, Idaho, and Kelly Sundberg writes movingly about living through domestic violence. These and many of the other selections offer illuminating, invaluable glimpses into lives that might otherwise remain outside the reader’s ken.

September 15, 2015

Levy (staff writer, The New Yorker; Female Chauvinist Pigs) gathers works published in prestigious literary magazines and journals to produce this year's Best collection. Creating a coherent anthology within a genre that by definition defies definition is no easy task, but Levy succeeds so well as to leave no trace of her efforts. Despite disparate voices, tones, structures, and content, these essays flow naturally into one another and are cinched by a recurring theme on aging. Roger Angell's "This Old Man" is literally a meditation on what it's like to be 93, with a whole catalog of deceased friends and loved loves and still wanting--thankfully--love and intimacy. In "Find Your Beach," Zadie Smith describes the changing face of her New York City neighborhood and reflects on how commercialization has marked the end of an age in its history. VERDICT A mixture of the philosophical and the humorous, all of these essays are compelling to read and resonate deeply. Works by new voices, such as Kelly Sundberg's haunting "It Will Look Like a Sunset," about her struggle to leave her physically abusive husband, also stand out. Memoir fans will not want to miss.--Meagan Lacy, Guttman Community Coll., CUNY

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