A companion volume to the one published in 1992, Ford's selection of 44 stories offers a reminder of some of the great postwar exponents of the form, as well as an overview of the work of more recent writers. Between them, they cover a wide range of styles and subjects. Thus Eudora Welty's drily affectionate portrayal of small-town types (Ladies in Spring) is followed by John Cheever's Reunion, in which a son recalls his last meeting with his alcoholic father. This masterpiece of compressed emotion is followed in turn by Elizabeth Spencer's artfully diffuse account of a romance gone awry (Ship Island: the Story of a Mermaid).

This juxtapositioning of disparate moods can act as a bridge, as when John Updike's slyly knowing study of marital discord (Natural Color) is followed by Annie Proulx's grisly yarn about an elderly rancher, The Half-Skinned Steer - elements of both combining in Andre Dubus's Killers, a quietly horrifying tale about a good man driven to extremes by the murder of his son.

A sizeable proportion of the stories deal with terrible events: 9/11, Aids and the Vietnam war are among the topics explored. Of these, Robert Stone's spare and moving Helping, about a Vietnam veteran coping with the aftermath of his war years, is one of the best; but others - Bharati Mukerjee's The Management of Grief, for example, about a woman coming to terms with the loss of her family in a terrorist attack - are no less impressive.

The Granta Book Of American Short Stories Volume Two edited by Richard Ford
Granta, £12.99 Buy the book here

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