The best short stories of 1920, and the yearbook of the American short story — Story, Setting & Ideas

Diction and Social Codes

Gerould's prose relies on verbs of perception and restraint: "she had the sensation of waters closing over her" conveys internal crisis through metaphor rather than exclamation. The characters speak in short, polite phrases—"By all means," "May I?"—that mask unease. O'Brien's selection criteria, outlined in his yearbook, favor stories where dialogue carries subtext. The coroner's question about "the—peculiar element" is left hanging, the dash doing the work of euphemism. This technique appears in other stories: characters often communicate through what is left unsaid, a hallmark of the psychological realism O'Brien champions.

Structure and Pacing

The excerpt builds tension through incremental detail: the storm, the crowded inn, the stranger who turns out to be the coroner. O'Brien's anthology includes stories that delay revelation, as when Mrs. Lonsdale "had only to make a negative sign" instead of speaking. The narrative moves from external action (the car, the rain) to internal reaction ("respite had been offered her"). This structural pattern—a crisis introduced, then deferred—recurs in other selections, suggesting O'Brien valued stories that create suspense through accumulation rather than sudden twists.

Setting as Psychological Mirror

The inn functions as a confined space where social roles become precarious. "The small public room was almost filled"—the crowd forces intimacy, and the "very gay, very dripping party" underscores the contrast between public cheer and private dread. O'Brien's authors often use weather and architecture to reflect inner states: the storm that "whipped the curtains out of their hands" parallels Mrs. Lonsdale's loss of control. The editor's yearbook notes a trend toward "local color" that serves psychological ends, not mere decoration.

Voice and Narrative Distance

Gerould maintains a close third-person perspective, filtering events through Mrs. Lonsdale's consciousness. Phrases like "it seemed, dimly, that respite had been offered her" keep the reader inside her uncertainty. O'Brien's anthology includes multiple stories that use this limited viewpoint, avoiding omniscient commentary. The coroner's dialogue is reported without interior access, heightening his ambiguity. This narrative strategy—showing without telling—aligns with O'Brien's stated preference for "distinction" in craft, as he writes in his editorial introduction.

Readers approaching this anthology should attend to how O'Brien's selections foreground character interiority over plot mechanics. The yearbook section provides bibliographic context, but the stories themselves reward close reading of gesture, pause, and indirect speech. Gerould's excerpt exemplifies the editor's taste for restraint: every detail serves the psychological portrait, and the storm is as much internal as external.

There’s a particular ache in Gerould’s “The Bird in the Bush,” that sense of a life observed but not quite lived. O’Brien caught so many of those quiet, precise moments in 1920. I keep returning to that same careful attention in American short stories — A Closer Reading, which feels less like a collection and more like sitting with an old friend who remembers what we’ve both nearly forgotten.