Look forward to lending it out to friends to see what they think! My favorites in this collection are...
Alexie, Canin, Drury, Eugenides, Franzen, McCracken (The Giant of Cape Cod was perhaps my favorite of the whole collection), O'Nan, and Simpson.

An excellent collection that's deeply situated in 1996 and the Northeast United States, Granta 58 pulls together some incredible voices in the world of American Prose at the end of the twentieth century. Most notable to me were Alexei, Franzen, Eugenides, Drury, Guterson, Moore, and O’Nan, and my favorite piece was easily Elizabeth McCracken's The Giant of Cape Cod. I liked that many of the pieces were from places I am intimately familiar with – including extensive geographic references to Massachusetts, Cape Cod, New York, and others, and I even cackled at a direct reference to channel 38's The Movie Loft. The collection has a distinctly 1996 feel to it, and I am not sure I can entirely pinpoint why. Still, mired in its era, this issue of Granta is an exciting reminder of the early careers of these talented novelists who all went on to incredible careers. The introduction was also notable to me, as Ian Jack writes about the editorial process and waffling over including the authors the panel decided to include, while others such as David Foster Wallace and Donna Tartt were left out. Funny to read in hindsight, as they constitute two of my favorite contemporary authors. Granta 58 is great.