Kevin Smokler reviewed The Best American Essays 2020 by André Aciman
Review of 'The Best American Essays 2020' on 'Storygraph'
3 stars
A lot of this depends on if you want the editor of the anthology to have one essay in many different categories or to chose a themes pick a theme that interests them and curate a collection based on a theme. Andre Aciman has done the latter which is a fine approach but he seems to be really into writing about illness and people whose children died unexpectedly. Which is as good a subject as any and he's chosen good work here. Mostly. Mostly I don't care for his choice of topic and his preferred essay style seems to be a ton of abstraction and intellectualizing and then, surprise!, we're talking about a dead kid!
Yeah, no thanks. I guess I prefer a "best of" to be a survey rather than an extension of the editor's tase.