Sign in with Facebook
Loading...
Interesting Women: Stories
by
Andrea Lee
In vivid prose shot through with mordant irony, Lee takes readers into the hearts and minds of a number of extraordinary women who, with wit and style, must grapple with questions of identity in a world where everyone is, in some ways, a foreigner.
Paperback, 256 pages
Published
April 8th 2003
by Random House Trade Paperbacks
(first published April 9th 2002)
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
This book is not yet featured on Listopia.
Add this book to your favorite list »
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
299)
This is a book that is full of engaging stories, all in a similar vein with common themes, but quite different from one another in the scope and emotions of the story. I liked it overall, but I was frustrated at the sheer number of "50 cent" words that I had to look up. There were at least 20 words that I'd never even heard of before and I consider myself well read. I hate to use the word pretentious, but there are many times that a more familiar word would have worked just fine. No need to show...more
Race, sex, class, Lee is a fine writer and this is a very enjoyable collection of short stories, almost all of them great!
Looking forward to reading more of her work.
Looking forward to reading more of her work.
This book should be called "Interesting [Sex Lives of] Women," or, better, "Interesting [One-Time Sexual Choices Made By Rather Unrelatable] Women." I read the first story and, I admit, just skimmed the rest. In the first story, a woman hires two call girls for her husband, and.... nothing. This book really doesn't explore much of what happened after that, although it does try to explain why she might have made the decision. Then, while she's arranged to have the house to herself--kids gone, hus...more
Very thinly veiled stories from the author's life, but Lee has the advantage of those stories being about living in Milan married to a rich Italian and having rich American men try to seduce her with flights to New York City and rejecting them by saying, I write for the New Yorker, I can fly there whenever I want. Suckas.
The title story has added the term 'interesting woman' to my lexicon, which I only now realize I'd been needing forever.
The title story has added the term 'interesting woman' to my lexicon, which I only now realize I'd been needing forever.
After that we walked through dark rooms with marble floors and piled furniture covered with sheets; some rooms had chandeliers and some had ceilings painted with scenes from mythology, and one very big room held nine - I counted them - grand pianos. I tried to play one and it just rattled.
-Andrea Lee, Interesting Women
-Andrea Lee, Interesting Women
The stories in this book all fall in the same general category: interesting (duh) upper-middle-class women, usually African-American, living abroad, often in Italy. It's a category I like, but since they're all so topically similar, a few of the stories (that would probably be good on their own) sink a little lower when you read them all at once. But this is always the problem with short story collections, and when I sat down to look at the story list I picked about half as my favorites. To wit:...more
A few of the stories were a little dull or repetitive, but most were engaging and insightful. Andrea Lee is extremely erudite, and has a great writing style.
Until I read a review online somewhere that referred to this book as Sex in the City set in Italy, I quite liked it. The author brings us to some truly exotic situations. The lead-off story is about a woman who buys two Brazilian prostitutes for her husband on his birthday. There's another about an American in a showdown of social mores with poor Africans. However, as you churn through all ten or so stories, you'll be wearied by the sameness: Every protagonist is black, Harvard-educated, proud a...more
I loved this book because of its beautiful, crystal clear descriptive nature.
Such a fantastic writer!
Much of this book is beautiful, about half of it is interesting, but never have I been more compelled to write a note to an author I don't know, and that note would say this: "Hey, if you hate white men this much, maybe stop marrying them and writing about it?"
What a little pleasure. Discovered this book via New Yorker's fiction podcast; it was Gary Shteynghart's pick. "Brothers and Sisters of the World" is positively one of the best stories I have ever read.
I heard Ms. Lee read a story from this book on Valentine's Day, 2002. I love the whole collection.
Re-read 7/2009
Re-read 7/2011. Enjoyed it a bit less this time, but it was very topical.
Re-read 7/2011. Enjoyed it a bit less this time, but it was very topical.
just completed "brothers & sisters around the world"...exceptional short story!
strong start but quickly grew repetitive.
Interesting Women: Stories by Andrea Lee (2003)
Apr 23, 2013
Zach
marked it as to-read
Apr 21, 2013
Bindu Chembrakkalathil
marked it as to-read
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
default
Apr 17, 2013
Jasmeet Kaur
added it
Apr 06, 2013
Kelley Sullivan
is currently reading it
Mar 29, 2013
Andrea
marked it as to-read
Mar 27, 2013
Juan
marked it as to-read
Mar 09, 2013
Candace
marked it as to-read
There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
Be the first to start one »
May 20, 2008 01:36am