this is not a published book that I could adopt but I do enjoy having access to excerpts of upcoming titles. I hope these continue.

Microfiction isn't everyone's cup of tea. It's the same with short stories - some readers want a full story they can really get into and escape into but I like short stories, I like dissecting them and rereading them and trying to guess what would have happened outside the parameters of the short story. Microfiction is that, but in a whole new level. Only 400 words max?? That takes skill and precision and a hell of an editor.

I always think anthologies are hit or miss, but this one contains mostly hits. This is my third experience reading microfiction and I must say I am in awe of what these authors can accomplish in such few words.

Dammit, I was going to be suitably concise, and say the hit rate of this book was dreadfully low. Then I thought to add a remark about how a great majority of these pieces are designed to appeal to flash fiction editors and publishers and award judges, and they do so to such an extent that it reduces the appeal for the common, everyday, average reader big time. It's taken bare years to become a genre of its own, and up its own. But then things changed, and I stumbled on a "story" called "The Laundry Room Comes First". And while it sounds nasty to pick one piece out in particular, when a few really are good and memorable constructs, or are really good and memorable moments crimped into the format of a story and almost surviving, or are really good novel formats (the list poem narrating one or more life through paint colour names, etc), this really has to be picked on. What is this but a pretentious list poem with pretensions of narrative, form, poetry and interest? In three parts? I think most of the authors here are happy in the knowledge that they will never sell much, but some of them really don't help themselves in that regard. Again, I don't wish to shit on any one author, editor, advisor, specialist (heck – I'm not one of those), but too much of this will appeal to only one niche, insular group fond of one niche and increasingly insular style of literature.

PS And on the whole, most of their journals and suchlike have really wanky names.

Thank you Net Galley. I was recently introduced to micro fiction and was keen to read this title when it appeared on Net galley. On the whole I enjoyed it very much. There were some entries that were not so enjoyable but they were over quickly! The majority of the stories were great and a delight to read.

Microfiction or flash fiction isn't something I'd ever come across before stumbling across this on Netgalley, this is a compilation of over 80 pieces, so perfect as an introduction to the format, there's such a variety of authors, genres and topics that there should be something in here for everyone. As with most compilations, there were some I really liked and some I skimmed through; one of the plus sides of microfiction is that if you find yourself not enjoying a piece as much then you won't be wasting much time on it as each is around the 400 word mark. I found them to be a bit deceptive into how much time I could spend reading them; with the author using such a small amount of text to put their character or premise across so much is open for the reader to world build and draw their own conclusions which makes its quite possible that different people will have very different reading experiences. I don't think that personally this format is really for me but I'm glad to have had the opportunity to read this and if you enjoy shorter pieces of writing then this collection is definitely worth a go.

This really wasn't for me. I didn't connect to any of the stories and the writing throughout was quite overwritten in my opinion.

Easy, enjoyable read. Great variety of authors. Good book to use with a creative writing class to introduce students to microfiction and publishers.

My introduction to microfiction has actually been pretty auspicious. There was something on Goodreads a while back and well known authors contributed very short scary stories. There was one of them, two sentences only, but it was just awesome, very poignant and effective. So I suppose my standards were set pretty high, but then again I did go into reading this best of 2019 collection with realistic expectations, which were mainly that it’ll be a sort of experimental read. And so it was. And for how quickly it took to get through (120 minutes or so), it was worth it, but it wasn’t quite for me. Dan Chaon (a great writer in my opinion) in his foreword talks about the transportive quality of a great story. For me only one story in this collection (about staying up all night) had that. And there was one I found to be very clever, it was the shortest one in the book…reminded me of those two sentence specials. The rest read very much like poetry and I don’t really care very much for poetry. I can appreciate the stylistic choices, the deliberately trimmed down to essentials language, but overall it just doesn’t speak to me the same way a work of fiction does. I suppose I was hoping for a proper short stories told in a cleverly condensed versions, but that doesn’t seem to be what microfiction is all about. But then again it’s an entire genre onto itself, I’m sure it has its fans. Most of the authors have been published by small presses I’ve never heard of and most seem to teach creative writing or English. So anyway…the experiment concluded and the results are…well, for one thing a more profound understanding of what microfiction is and for another, that it isn’t quite a thing for me. Poetry fans would probably appreciate this much more. Interesting, though, conceptually. Thanks Netgalley.

These stories didn’t grip me like I hoped they would. It’s possible that microfiction isn’t my genre.

Full disclosure: I know one of the editors of this book personally, and a few of the authors. That said, I really enjoyed this, the first in a new series of anthologies of Microfiction. I thought there was a strong variety of stories, though felt that the ordering of the stories (as opposed to alphabetically by author) would have helped; stories that had a similar tone, feel, cadence, etc., were often one after another. Otherwise, I'd definitely read this again.

I've read Sudden Fiction/Flash Fiction for nearly three decades, and it's been interesting to watch it evolve.
This collection, like most story collections, has some phenomenally good stories. But it also has some crappy stories. But it's like a grand buffet-- take all of what YOU want and leave the rest for others with different tastes.
I received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Mystery, romance, mythology and pathos. It is all here in the Best Microfiction 2019.

In the time taken to watch another catheter ad on daytime tv, you could slip into a fully formed life. It may be the story of a dragon, a protective older brother, or a murder victim. Some of these super-short stories may linger for days while others quickly fade from memory. However, all 87 are worth the reader’s time. My personal favorites are the post-apocalyptic “You’ve Stopped” by Tommy Dean and the heartfelt “Any Body” by Sarah Freligh. The Best Microfiction 2019 deserves 4 stars!

Thanks to Petekinesis and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

Unfortunately, this anthology was disappointing for me. I generally like microfiction; I assume the editors and I just have vastly different tastes. I found too many of the stories relied on sordidness for impact and, in the first half of the book, I found too many had little or no variation in cadence. Reading multiple stories in that style together was just too repetitive. As this was only noticeable in the first half of the book, I expect it would be possible to avoid the issue by reordering the stories.

I normally wouldn’t mention formatting on pre-publication copy, but on the off-chance it was intentional, I thought I’d mention I found the heading font, with its mix of capitals and lowercase letters, incredibly distracting.

Just when I was thinking about and looking into flash fiction this collection became available through NetGalley. I started on it right away and found it to be a wonderful collection of micro fiction. I liked that the stories and authors came from around the globe and varied so much in terms of subject matter.

I particularly enjoyed ‘He, She, It, They’ by Anita Arlov, ‘The end of the world’ by Noa Sivan and ‘Euthanasia’ by Myfanwy Collins.

I’d definitely recommend this collection to anyone who enjoys micro fiction or wants to explore it.

My copy was missing page 89 but I imagine this will be rectified when published.