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This Is Not Chick Lit: Original Stories by America's Best Women Writers
Chick A genre of fiction that often recycles the following Girl in big city desperately searches for Mr. Right in between dieting and shopping for shoes. Girl gets dumped (sometimes repeatedly). Girl finds Prince Charming.
This Is Not Chick Lit is a celebration of America’s most dynamic literary voices, as well as a much needed reminder that, for every stock protagonist with a designer handbag and three boyfriends, there is a woman writer pushing the envelope of literary fiction with imagination, humor, and depth.
The original short stories in this collection touch on some of the same themes as chick lit–the search for love and identity–but they do so with extraordinary power, creativity, and range; they are also political, provocative, and, at turns, utterly surprising. Featuring marquee names as well as burgeoning talents, This Is Not Chick Lit will nourish your heart, and your mind.
Including these original
“The Thing Around Your Neck” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
“Two Days” by Aimee Bender
“An Open Letter to Doctor X” by Francine Prose
“Gabe” by Holiday Reinhorn
“Documents of Passion Love” by Carolyn Ferrell
“Volunteers Are Shining Stars” by Curtis Sittenfeld
“Selling the General” by Jennifer Egan
“The Seventy-two-Ounce Steak Challenge” by Dika Lam
“Love Machine” by Samantha Hunt
“Ava Bean” by Jennifer S. Davis
“Embrace” by Roxana Robinson
“The Epiphany Branch” by Mary Gordon
“Joan, Jeanne, La Pucelle, Maid of Orléans” by Judy Budnitz
“Gabriella, My Heart” by Cristina Henríquez
“The Red Coat” by Caitlin Macy
“The Matthew Effect” by Binnie Kirshenbaum
“The Recipe” by Lynne Tillman
“Meaning of Ends” by Martha Witt
Praise for This Is Not Chick Lit
“This Is Not Chick Lit is important not only for its content, but for its title. I’ll know we’re getting somewhere when equally talented male writers feel they have to separate themselves from the endless stream of fiction glorifying war, hunting and sports by naming an anthology This Is Not a Guy Thing.”—Gloria Steinem
“These voices, diverse and almost eerily resonant, offer us a refreshing breath of womanhood-untamed, ungroomed, and unglossed.”—Elle
This Is Not Chick Lit is a celebration of America’s most dynamic literary voices, as well as a much needed reminder that, for every stock protagonist with a designer handbag and three boyfriends, there is a woman writer pushing the envelope of literary fiction with imagination, humor, and depth.
The original short stories in this collection touch on some of the same themes as chick lit–the search for love and identity–but they do so with extraordinary power, creativity, and range; they are also political, provocative, and, at turns, utterly surprising. Featuring marquee names as well as burgeoning talents, This Is Not Chick Lit will nourish your heart, and your mind.
Including these original
“The Thing Around Your Neck” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
“Two Days” by Aimee Bender
“An Open Letter to Doctor X” by Francine Prose
“Gabe” by Holiday Reinhorn
“Documents of Passion Love” by Carolyn Ferrell
“Volunteers Are Shining Stars” by Curtis Sittenfeld
“Selling the General” by Jennifer Egan
“The Seventy-two-Ounce Steak Challenge” by Dika Lam
“Love Machine” by Samantha Hunt
“Ava Bean” by Jennifer S. Davis
“Embrace” by Roxana Robinson
“The Epiphany Branch” by Mary Gordon
“Joan, Jeanne, La Pucelle, Maid of Orléans” by Judy Budnitz
“Gabriella, My Heart” by Cristina Henríquez
“The Red Coat” by Caitlin Macy
“The Matthew Effect” by Binnie Kirshenbaum
“The Recipe” by Lynne Tillman
“Meaning of Ends” by Martha Witt
Praise for This Is Not Chick Lit
“This Is Not Chick Lit is important not only for its content, but for its title. I’ll know we’re getting somewhere when equally talented male writers feel they have to separate themselves from the endless stream of fiction glorifying war, hunting and sports by naming an anthology This Is Not a Guy Thing.”—Gloria Steinem
“These voices, diverse and almost eerily resonant, offer us a refreshing breath of womanhood-untamed, ungroomed, and unglossed.”—Elle
336 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 174 reviews
March 16, 2010
The short story is such a terribly underrated literary form. I always hear that publishers are reluctant to put out books of short stories, which I just don't understand. If people are truly as plagued with short attention spans as everyone says they are, then short stories would be the perfect way to deliver storytelling to more people. When done skillfully, you get all the benefits of the novel, but in 15- and 30-minute chunks.
I very much enjoyed this collection of short stories, even though there were a couple I skipped over because they just weren't doing it for me. There wasn't much in the way of a common theme to the anthology, beyond that all of the authors were women and that they write outside of the hugely-popular realm of "chick lit." (Hence, the title.) The point seemed to be that, hey, women can write serious literature, too! To which my response is, duh! I would think that only a total misogynist would fail to recognize the contributions of women to literary fiction, but then again, if there is one thing that I know I can count on, it is on the seemingly eternal presence of bigotry and prejudice in every aspect of human culture.
Anyways, I liked this, and I think anyone who likes short stories and interesting literary fiction and who doesn't really care for chick lit would find it at least worth a read.
I very much enjoyed this collection of short stories, even though there were a couple I skipped over because they just weren't doing it for me. There wasn't much in the way of a common theme to the anthology, beyond that all of the authors were women and that they write outside of the hugely-popular realm of "chick lit." (Hence, the title.) The point seemed to be that, hey, women can write serious literature, too! To which my response is, duh! I would think that only a total misogynist would fail to recognize the contributions of women to literary fiction, but then again, if there is one thing that I know I can count on, it is on the seemingly eternal presence of bigotry and prejudice in every aspect of human culture.
Anyways, I liked this, and I think anyone who likes short stories and interesting literary fiction and who doesn't really care for chick lit would find it at least worth a read.
August 27, 2007
Admittedly, I picked this up because of my hatred for the titular subgenre - a horrible plot structure wherin skinny, whiny WASPs spend more on shoes than the GDP of several developing countries (what the hell is a strappy Manolo?). And it's especially disheartening to see huge, pink displays of the stuff in bookstores, especially when women authors are turning out the same volume of work as male authors, but getting overwhelmingly overlooked in criticism and awards (See Ursula K. LeGuin's excellent essay on the subject in
The Wave in the Mind
). This is not to say that I hate any genre fiction - I do love good SF, and while I'm not a crime novel buff, I understand why they're a fun escape - but that I'm a little wary of associating Women Authors with such a bland, awful type of book.
Anyway, this is a collection of short stories by contemporary women authors, only two of which I'd heard of, and it's fantastic. Independent of Not Being Chick Lit, it's actually a very good anthology.
Anyway, this is a collection of short stories by contemporary women authors, only two of which I'd heard of, and it's fantastic. Independent of Not Being Chick Lit, it's actually a very good anthology.
October 4, 2017
I was expecting to be blown away by these stories, but found most of them confusing or lacking. Maybe I wasn't reading them critically enough? There were a few stories I really enjoyed, but most of them not so much. I know they were suppose to comment on diversity in society, but they all felt negative or the message seemed weakly presented.
September 24, 2011
This book was for book group. Prior to reading its introduction I wasn't aware that the genre of "chick lit" even existed. Just totally off my radar, really. Anyhow, so the woman who collected these short stories wanted to spotlight talented female writers who aren't getting a lot of attention because 'chick lit' is drowning them out. She wanted to show the world there are American women writing poignant, meaningful literature, not just beach reads or trashy, formulaic stories. Well, nice idea except I didn't feel like this collection of short stories accomplished its goal. Instead of getting excited about these new women writers, I came away utterly unimpressed. Many of the women in the stories are full of cowardice and self-loathing and lack integrity and aspiration. Now, clearly most women in real life have times when these characteristics are part of themselves, part of their experiences. But overwhelming, I don't think this is representative of life or women. Instead of reveling in the talent of the writers like the editor wants us too I was depressed at the lack of quality, the lack of depth and breadth, in short, not hopeful at all about current female American writers.
August 23, 2021
There is a wide variety of different KINDS of stories in this short story collection, and in my opinion a massive range in quality, as well. Most short story collections I've read have been from a single author - in such a collection the stories tend to share some threads (if not thematically, in terms of prose), of course, that give a form of unity. Of course, because this is a collection of stories composed by different authors - one per author - that "unity" is lacking. To me that made reading it in a traditional "front to back" fashion a bit jarring.
My favorite stories among the collection are riveting, indeed. The title of the collection is "This Is Not Chick Lit" - and with this framed in mind - perhaps what is most in the spirit of the name are the stories that cover the same setting and characters AS chick lit, but paint with a far more nuanced and "real" brush - it gives a pretty stark contrast to Bridget Jone's Diary, anyways.
There are many really strong such stories in the collection - Chimamanda N. Adichie's story gives us a darker and much more nuanced look into this, indeed. Aimee Bender's story shows us a lot of the imperfections of the the "mate selection" process in a way chick lit would never. Binnie Kirshenbaum's challenges "happy ever after"... there are a lot like that. And every one of them is not quite like anything I'd read before - maybe that's the point of the collection. And so then I did enjoy it and, if you are in any way interested in this subject matter, I suggest you read it too.
My favorite stories among the collection are riveting, indeed. The title of the collection is "This Is Not Chick Lit" - and with this framed in mind - perhaps what is most in the spirit of the name are the stories that cover the same setting and characters AS chick lit, but paint with a far more nuanced and "real" brush - it gives a pretty stark contrast to Bridget Jone's Diary, anyways.
There are many really strong such stories in the collection - Chimamanda N. Adichie's story gives us a darker and much more nuanced look into this, indeed. Aimee Bender's story shows us a lot of the imperfections of the the "mate selection" process in a way chick lit would never. Binnie Kirshenbaum's challenges "happy ever after"... there are a lot like that. And every one of them is not quite like anything I'd read before - maybe that's the point of the collection. And so then I did enjoy it and, if you are in any way interested in this subject matter, I suggest you read it too.
May 24, 2020
“America’s Best Women Writers” is a BOLD description for what I just read (Chimimanda is, obviously, excluded from that critique)
July 25, 2021
This might be my favorite book I’ve read all year and it’s not even a novel.
God, I love short stories. I especially love niche, MODERN short stories. I will actually faint from desire for niche, MODERN short stories that were written by women, of women, and for women. There’s no commitment—if you don’t like one, it only takes up 30 minutes of your day max. If you don’t like a book, you have to drudge through page after page until you REALLY decide that if you read another page, you’ll implode. And unlike books, collections of short stories can hold my attention span. But this wasn’t even a problem for these because they were so good. I love them so much I’m going to try to find more collections like this one.
Every single piece of work in this collection was absolutely genius. This was seriously some of the best writing I’ve read all year, and all in one, four hour long sitting. Thank you Elizabeth Merrick, thank you women.
God, I love short stories. I especially love niche, MODERN short stories. I will actually faint from desire for niche, MODERN short stories that were written by women, of women, and for women. There’s no commitment—if you don’t like one, it only takes up 30 minutes of your day max. If you don’t like a book, you have to drudge through page after page until you REALLY decide that if you read another page, you’ll implode. And unlike books, collections of short stories can hold my attention span. But this wasn’t even a problem for these because they were so good. I love them so much I’m going to try to find more collections like this one.
Every single piece of work in this collection was absolutely genius. This was seriously some of the best writing I’ve read all year, and all in one, four hour long sitting. Thank you Elizabeth Merrick, thank you women.
April 13, 2024
when i purchased this book years ago at a used bookstore in cleveland, i was much more in my Literary Fiction era than i am now, so there's a chance i would have enjoyed this more if i had read this then. but i didn't!! so we'll never know!!
March 23, 2009
I had to return it to the library without reading every single story, but I think I'll check it out again and finish them soon.
My favorite was "Volunteers Are Our Shining Stars" by Curtis Sittenfeld, about a woman who lives in DC and volunteers at a homeless shelter. Usually, I get pissed off by DC writers because they all seem to have a privileged, blind-to-the-world viewpoint... or maybe I'm just saying that because I'm thinking of Laura Zigman again.
Anyway, the main character in Sittenfeld's story volunteers at a place that must be the N Street Village shelter, which I have visited, and although she lives in a nice part of town, she doesn't condescend to the homeless or bend over backwards to hold them up as pillars of goodness, either. Instead, she speaks plainly about how the kids are cute, but will turn on you or get bored easily. The mothers inspire equal parts fear and admiration in her. After all, they somehow manage to have sex appeal even if they are dirt poor and have kids in tow. The story isn't so much about the main character's relationship with the shelter residents, though. When a new volunteer arrives, she rubs the narrator the wrong way with her over-the-top perkiness and less-than-fresh-looking skin and tendency to touch people. But when the narrator overreacts and assaults her, she becomes the one who makes everyone else uneasy. I loved this story because it was such a realistic look at one woman's assessments of the people around her; how little unoffensive things can really turn you off someone. I think I would also dislike that new volunteer and want to choke her.
Another story I really enjoyed was the "72 Ounce Steak Challenge" by Dika Lam, in which two Chinese-Canadian sisters go on a trip together and one's pain is amplified by the joy of the other. On the surface, the older sister is the successful one--She's married to a rich man and has a blossoming career of her own. Her younger sister is still finding herself and has just dropped out of medical school because she just doesn't want to do it anymore. What the older sister hasn't told the rest of the family yet is that she's about to get a divorce. It doesn't help that her younger sister, instead of needing any guidance, takes on a steak-eating challenge during the trip and launches her own stardom as a professional eater. The older sister has to sit there and wait as her sister finishes the ginormous meal and wait some more for her to soak up the attention of all the impressed onlookers.
My favorite was "Volunteers Are Our Shining Stars" by Curtis Sittenfeld, about a woman who lives in DC and volunteers at a homeless shelter. Usually, I get pissed off by DC writers because they all seem to have a privileged, blind-to-the-world viewpoint... or maybe I'm just saying that because I'm thinking of Laura Zigman again.
Anyway, the main character in Sittenfeld's story volunteers at a place that must be the N Street Village shelter, which I have visited, and although she lives in a nice part of town, she doesn't condescend to the homeless or bend over backwards to hold them up as pillars of goodness, either. Instead, she speaks plainly about how the kids are cute, but will turn on you or get bored easily. The mothers inspire equal parts fear and admiration in her. After all, they somehow manage to have sex appeal even if they are dirt poor and have kids in tow. The story isn't so much about the main character's relationship with the shelter residents, though. When a new volunteer arrives, she rubs the narrator the wrong way with her over-the-top perkiness and less-than-fresh-looking skin and tendency to touch people. But when the narrator overreacts and assaults her, she becomes the one who makes everyone else uneasy. I loved this story because it was such a realistic look at one woman's assessments of the people around her; how little unoffensive things can really turn you off someone. I think I would also dislike that new volunteer and want to choke her.
Another story I really enjoyed was the "72 Ounce Steak Challenge" by Dika Lam, in which two Chinese-Canadian sisters go on a trip together and one's pain is amplified by the joy of the other. On the surface, the older sister is the successful one--She's married to a rich man and has a blossoming career of her own. Her younger sister is still finding herself and has just dropped out of medical school because she just doesn't want to do it anymore. What the older sister hasn't told the rest of the family yet is that she's about to get a divorce. It doesn't help that her younger sister, instead of needing any guidance, takes on a steak-eating challenge during the trip and launches her own stardom as a professional eater. The older sister has to sit there and wait as her sister finishes the ginormous meal and wait some more for her to soak up the attention of all the impressed onlookers.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 31, 2010
This is a quirky little collection that is sometimes hit or miss for me. I definitely like the idea of highlighting female authors who write about more than women who shop and man-hunt in "the big city." I should also give props for the unique ways of storytelling, though sometimes the exposition lost me. We have stories that are written in bits and pieces of (fictional) historical records, stories written in second person, stories that re-tell Joan of Arc as if a modern day documentary crew was attempting to film her story.
I'm partial to ones such as "Selling the General," where a disgraced socialite turns into a publicist for an exiled genocidal dictator in order to make ends meet, "The Seventy-Two Ounce Steal Challenge," where one sister tries to save another but is in need of saving herself, and "Ava Bean," about a young ex-con whose daughter was taken away from her, trying to make a fresh start by becoming the personal assistant of an aging, crotchety socialite. My softest spot might be for "Volunteers are Shining Stars," where a young volunteer at a DC halfway house feels threatened by a new volunteer. I like how the point of view is with the young one, but you can tell as the story goes on that she's the one who's a little off her nut.
I'll end with a quotefrom Gloria Steinem on the back- "I know we're getting somewhere when equally talented male writers feel they have to seperate themselves from the endless stream of fiction glorifying war, hunting and sports by naming an anthology 'This Is Not a Guy Thing.'"
I'm partial to ones such as "Selling the General," where a disgraced socialite turns into a publicist for an exiled genocidal dictator in order to make ends meet, "The Seventy-Two Ounce Steal Challenge," where one sister tries to save another but is in need of saving herself, and "Ava Bean," about a young ex-con whose daughter was taken away from her, trying to make a fresh start by becoming the personal assistant of an aging, crotchety socialite. My softest spot might be for "Volunteers are Shining Stars," where a young volunteer at a DC halfway house feels threatened by a new volunteer. I like how the point of view is with the young one, but you can tell as the story goes on that she's the one who's a little off her nut.
I'll end with a quotefrom Gloria Steinem on the back- "I know we're getting somewhere when equally talented male writers feel they have to seperate themselves from the endless stream of fiction glorifying war, hunting and sports by naming an anthology 'This Is Not a Guy Thing.'"
July 14, 2019
THIS IS NOT CHICK LIT offers this succinct description of the genre of ‘chick lit’ in its introduction: “Chick lit is a genre, like the thriller, the sci-fi novel, or the fantasy epic. Its form and content are, more or less, formulaic: white girl in the big city searches for Prince Charming, all the while shopping, alternately cheating on or adhering to her diet, dodging her boss, and enjoying the occasional teary-eyed lunch with her token Sassy Gay Friend. Chick lit is the daughter of the romance novel and the stepsister to the fashion magazine.” From that point on, this collection works to present stories written by women that work outside of this framework. While I have many, many thoughts on this framing of the history of chick lit and the history if women writers in general, I can’t argue that this is not an incredible body of work. Each story within this book is unique and fascinating, tiny worlds each their own. If you’re interested in reading stories written by a varied and diverse group of female-identifying authors, this is definitely for you.
November 24, 2020
Picked this up at the secondhand bookstore by my house and it took me a while to get through but I thoroughly enjoyed it. This is a collection of short stories from an ensemble of heavily influential women authors aiming to upheave the status quo of ‘chick lit’ clichés, rejecting narratives of Mr. Right and nights out in high heels. Instead, the stories shift their focus to intimate matters such as strained familial relationships, impostor syndrome, and addressing sexuality, and so many of the stories abandon that customary Happy Ending that chick lit can be notorious for. The collection starts off with ‘The Thing Around Your Neck’, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie that I give a solid 9/10 to. Other favorites include ‘Volunteers are Shining Stars’ by Curtis Sittenfeld and ‘Gabriela, My Heart’ by Cristina Henriquez. I prefer short story collections because my attention span tolerates them best and if I don’t like something (which happened sort of often with this one) I can just skip to the next one and peek into a different author’s world. Overall pretty great, though; happy I read it 🙂
June 11, 2026
For lovers of Amy Hempel, Ottessa Moshfegh, and Elizabeth Strout, you will enjoy these edgy, wry short stories as I did. What a wonderful collection and opportunity to meet new writers to add to my TBR.
July 7, 2013
Good collection of short stories that I read a while ago. Donating now as clearing bookshelves for move.
August 19, 2015
Want to read after: Aimee Bender, Dika Lam, Samantha Hunt
The Thing Around Your Neck
Page 10- "You told him there was nothing to understand, it was just the way it was."
Two Days
Page 17- "He had that trustworthy face, a face I didn't trust, simply because I'd trusted it so swiftly."
Page 18- "I felt the love, spreading roots in my chest, making it so easy to smile; the way the promise of love loosens and eases the muscles of the face, and how the onset of pain had tightened them before, into tense lines and grit. How good it felt, to let go of grit for a second!"
Page 19- "...I asked, as I peeled the skin off a grape in slippery little triangles, and I understood then that I would be undressing every item of food I could because my clothes would be staying on."
Page 20- "The clouds were thick, and the water took on a metallic gray sheen that settled my mind."
An Open Letter to Doctor X
Page 22- "...every cell in my body felt soggy, as if my soul had been used as a paper towel to mop everything up."
Page 28- "After something like that happens, you see things differently. Or perhaps you realize how little you see."
Page 30- "If you aren't holding your breath, you should be. Certainly, in my daily work, I meet a lot of people who were never expecting to have something terrible happen. Who weren't watching out. Who were not waiting, as they say, for the other shoe to drop. Perhaps you too have wondered about that expression, Doctor. Isn't the logic inexorable? The other shoe will drop. How common is it for people to go to bed wearing one shoe?"
Volunteers are Shining Stars
Page 84- "She was experiencing a moment of profound personal triumph, though nothing was occurring that was remote profound or triumphant."
The Seventy-two-Ounce Steak Challenge
Page 129- "I was excited to go west because I'd already resigned myself to the likelihood of spending my twenties in a cubicle, with glorious postcards tacked to the walls to remind me of a world u illuminated by fluorescent light."
Page 144- "She wouldn't even pretend to be surprised, and her judgement would fall on me like winter."
Page 144- "I thought I might tune to a radio station and sing along to other people's misery. I thought I'd wait on the hood like the cool youth I'd never been, long enough for twilight to show its guts, for my sister to tire of the adulation."
Page 145- "The pink sky was like the Virginia drift of newly opened ice cream, so gorgeous I had to remind myself that it wasn't the planetarium. The day after tomorrow I would hop on a plane and wing back to my problems, but for now, as I gunned toward the grand peaks of Banff, I lost my interest in ghosts, and in crises that could not be solved in mountain times, because mountains are for people who need to know they're destined for something beautiful."
Love Machine
Page 150- "The trees' limbs become a darker shade of black, outlines that resemble huge dendrites or nerve endings against the sky."
Page 150- "He curls his body and counts the seconds between each pounding, waiting for the following thud to arrive so that the sliver of silenced, the moments between each knock, grow swollen, become rooms where long, long years of thought are stored, hallways filled with stalled breaths."
Page 151- "Such a road is necessary to feel the way he does, that society, if it has to exist, is best kept far, far away, remaining to him like some sort of rare granite outcropping or species of palm tree, hermit crab, or saltwater estuary - something that is, but just isn't here, not in the Montana woods."
Page 155- "...surprised and a bit winded by really how few details it can take to make a life..."
Page 160- "But there's no beauty in machines, and anyway all those people whose lives have been simplified by machines, they don't spend their days concentrating on beauty. They watch TV."
Ava Bean
Page 180- "What do you think is worse- forgetting or knowing?"
Page 181- "Until Lucy, Charlotte didn't understand anything about how the world works, about how one person can shape the course of another's life as much by absence as anything else, how a stranger's faith might be the closest thing to salvation you're ever offered."
Page 181- "For one forgiving moment, the weight is not unbearable."
Embrace
Page 183- "But no: it's the silence, the immobility of the room that's the problem, the implacably fixed furniture, the hushing carpet, the heavy curtains, the whole place awaiting human animation."
Page 194- "She feels less responsible now for the care of the world. If she vanishes, the world will rumble along without her."
Page 200- "Everything is over, everything falls away, now, all the intentions and crises of life, the small things...all of these don't matter, and the large things - what were the large things? None of them matter, now. It's all moving faster and faster, and here they are, all of them, trapped together, their doomed faces staring ahead, stunned, caught in this thundering, rumbling, accelerating plane, and he thinks, his mind slow and calm, that this is, really, what they all faced every day, hurtling through space together on the spinning planet, rushing, unaware, toward their final moments. And the spinning planet has been spinning like this, as it is now, for all time, sweeping though the endless black of space on its log elegant loop. It will go on, though for him, for them, it's all over, whatever happens."
Joan, Jeanne, La Pucelle, Maid of Orléans
Page 214- "She walks a particular way. Head in the clouds."
Page 215- "You can hear many things if you open your years; you can feel many things if you open your skin; if you lie very still among the grasses of the field and wait, you may feel the earth twitch like the hide of a sleeping animal; if you watch the clouds long enough, you can feel the pressure of things unseen..."
Page 216- "Sometimes the truth needs a little touching up. You can always make the truth a little truer."
Gabriella, My Heart
Page 250- "I hardly remember now what we talked about for so many afternoons..."
Page 259- "I was light with the feeling of having found someone. And, I guess, of having found myself."
Page 261- "But I felt different now, like I knew who I was, and because of knowing I could handle her, could control her effect on me."
Page 265-"My heart would reassemble itself with a part for Gabriella that I would keep but that would stay closed, and a part for Rey that would burn and stay strong."
The Matthew Effect
Page 291- "Bee wafted through the party as if she were a faint and distant sound, not a seductive sound like a train whistle in the night or a foghorn, but rather, like the sound an old house makes when it settles, a sound not worth investigating."
Page 296- "'What's going on?' Bee asked, and he told her 'Nothing.' Then he walked off as if Bee were nothing too, and in that moment, something ruptured. Not her heart -she did not love him- but perhaps her pride, which might be located next to loathing..."
Page 297- "...where she sat and wept from the shame of longing for this boy. The same of the truth as she believed it to be, but -get real- we all, with unrelenting frequency and vehemence, lie to ourselves like braided rugs. Mostly about big ticket items: love, happiness, desire unfulfilled."
The Recipe
Page 298- "Sadness, that's normal, it goes with the territory, but becoming bitter, bitterness is to be avoided, he said."
Page 303- "...while he grew older in the same place, without stopping time, though he found his illusions encouraged and indemnified by traces of the past..."
Page 304- "...he also felt that the bakers dwelled, as he did, in fantasy, that it envelopes them daily, and that what they did might be something else for them, too."
Page 306- "Now, scratches on a mahogany table that once nestled close to his father's side of the bed and his mother's yellowing music books, her seeing cushion with its needles tidily stuck where she'd pushed them last, marked matter-of-fact episodes and incidents in their lives, when accidents occurred or things happened haphazardly, causing nicks and dents, before death recast them as shrines."
Meaning of Ends
Page 310- "Since she arrived, the nights have been good. Good summer nights, dark and bold as a shape."
Page 312- "She understands now. Now she sees. A complicated see. Not with the eyes."
Page 313- "Let us point out that he sees and she sees that the meaning of the different ends is the same. She does not love him, and he does not love her."
The Thing Around Your Neck
Page 10- "You told him there was nothing to understand, it was just the way it was."
Two Days
Page 17- "He had that trustworthy face, a face I didn't trust, simply because I'd trusted it so swiftly."
Page 18- "I felt the love, spreading roots in my chest, making it so easy to smile; the way the promise of love loosens and eases the muscles of the face, and how the onset of pain had tightened them before, into tense lines and grit. How good it felt, to let go of grit for a second!"
Page 19- "...I asked, as I peeled the skin off a grape in slippery little triangles, and I understood then that I would be undressing every item of food I could because my clothes would be staying on."
Page 20- "The clouds were thick, and the water took on a metallic gray sheen that settled my mind."
An Open Letter to Doctor X
Page 22- "...every cell in my body felt soggy, as if my soul had been used as a paper towel to mop everything up."
Page 28- "After something like that happens, you see things differently. Or perhaps you realize how little you see."
Page 30- "If you aren't holding your breath, you should be. Certainly, in my daily work, I meet a lot of people who were never expecting to have something terrible happen. Who weren't watching out. Who were not waiting, as they say, for the other shoe to drop. Perhaps you too have wondered about that expression, Doctor. Isn't the logic inexorable? The other shoe will drop. How common is it for people to go to bed wearing one shoe?"
Volunteers are Shining Stars
Page 84- "She was experiencing a moment of profound personal triumph, though nothing was occurring that was remote profound or triumphant."
The Seventy-two-Ounce Steak Challenge
Page 129- "I was excited to go west because I'd already resigned myself to the likelihood of spending my twenties in a cubicle, with glorious postcards tacked to the walls to remind me of a world u illuminated by fluorescent light."
Page 144- "She wouldn't even pretend to be surprised, and her judgement would fall on me like winter."
Page 144- "I thought I might tune to a radio station and sing along to other people's misery. I thought I'd wait on the hood like the cool youth I'd never been, long enough for twilight to show its guts, for my sister to tire of the adulation."
Page 145- "The pink sky was like the Virginia drift of newly opened ice cream, so gorgeous I had to remind myself that it wasn't the planetarium. The day after tomorrow I would hop on a plane and wing back to my problems, but for now, as I gunned toward the grand peaks of Banff, I lost my interest in ghosts, and in crises that could not be solved in mountain times, because mountains are for people who need to know they're destined for something beautiful."
Love Machine
Page 150- "The trees' limbs become a darker shade of black, outlines that resemble huge dendrites or nerve endings against the sky."
Page 150- "He curls his body and counts the seconds between each pounding, waiting for the following thud to arrive so that the sliver of silenced, the moments between each knock, grow swollen, become rooms where long, long years of thought are stored, hallways filled with stalled breaths."
Page 151- "Such a road is necessary to feel the way he does, that society, if it has to exist, is best kept far, far away, remaining to him like some sort of rare granite outcropping or species of palm tree, hermit crab, or saltwater estuary - something that is, but just isn't here, not in the Montana woods."
Page 155- "...surprised and a bit winded by really how few details it can take to make a life..."
Page 160- "But there's no beauty in machines, and anyway all those people whose lives have been simplified by machines, they don't spend their days concentrating on beauty. They watch TV."
Ava Bean
Page 180- "What do you think is worse- forgetting or knowing?"
Page 181- "Until Lucy, Charlotte didn't understand anything about how the world works, about how one person can shape the course of another's life as much by absence as anything else, how a stranger's faith might be the closest thing to salvation you're ever offered."
Page 181- "For one forgiving moment, the weight is not unbearable."
Embrace
Page 183- "But no: it's the silence, the immobility of the room that's the problem, the implacably fixed furniture, the hushing carpet, the heavy curtains, the whole place awaiting human animation."
Page 194- "She feels less responsible now for the care of the world. If she vanishes, the world will rumble along without her."
Page 200- "Everything is over, everything falls away, now, all the intentions and crises of life, the small things...all of these don't matter, and the large things - what were the large things? None of them matter, now. It's all moving faster and faster, and here they are, all of them, trapped together, their doomed faces staring ahead, stunned, caught in this thundering, rumbling, accelerating plane, and he thinks, his mind slow and calm, that this is, really, what they all faced every day, hurtling through space together on the spinning planet, rushing, unaware, toward their final moments. And the spinning planet has been spinning like this, as it is now, for all time, sweeping though the endless black of space on its log elegant loop. It will go on, though for him, for them, it's all over, whatever happens."
Joan, Jeanne, La Pucelle, Maid of Orléans
Page 214- "She walks a particular way. Head in the clouds."
Page 215- "You can hear many things if you open your years; you can feel many things if you open your skin; if you lie very still among the grasses of the field and wait, you may feel the earth twitch like the hide of a sleeping animal; if you watch the clouds long enough, you can feel the pressure of things unseen..."
Page 216- "Sometimes the truth needs a little touching up. You can always make the truth a little truer."
Gabriella, My Heart
Page 250- "I hardly remember now what we talked about for so many afternoons..."
Page 259- "I was light with the feeling of having found someone. And, I guess, of having found myself."
Page 261- "But I felt different now, like I knew who I was, and because of knowing I could handle her, could control her effect on me."
Page 265-"My heart would reassemble itself with a part for Gabriella that I would keep but that would stay closed, and a part for Rey that would burn and stay strong."
The Matthew Effect
Page 291- "Bee wafted through the party as if she were a faint and distant sound, not a seductive sound like a train whistle in the night or a foghorn, but rather, like the sound an old house makes when it settles, a sound not worth investigating."
Page 296- "'What's going on?' Bee asked, and he told her 'Nothing.' Then he walked off as if Bee were nothing too, and in that moment, something ruptured. Not her heart -she did not love him- but perhaps her pride, which might be located next to loathing..."
Page 297- "...where she sat and wept from the shame of longing for this boy. The same of the truth as she believed it to be, but -get real- we all, with unrelenting frequency and vehemence, lie to ourselves like braided rugs. Mostly about big ticket items: love, happiness, desire unfulfilled."
The Recipe
Page 298- "Sadness, that's normal, it goes with the territory, but becoming bitter, bitterness is to be avoided, he said."
Page 303- "...while he grew older in the same place, without stopping time, though he found his illusions encouraged and indemnified by traces of the past..."
Page 304- "...he also felt that the bakers dwelled, as he did, in fantasy, that it envelopes them daily, and that what they did might be something else for them, too."
Page 306- "Now, scratches on a mahogany table that once nestled close to his father's side of the bed and his mother's yellowing music books, her seeing cushion with its needles tidily stuck where she'd pushed them last, marked matter-of-fact episodes and incidents in their lives, when accidents occurred or things happened haphazardly, causing nicks and dents, before death recast them as shrines."
Meaning of Ends
Page 310- "Since she arrived, the nights have been good. Good summer nights, dark and bold as a shape."
Page 312- "She understands now. Now she sees. A complicated see. Not with the eyes."
Page 313- "Let us point out that he sees and she sees that the meaning of the different ends is the same. She does not love him, and he does not love her."
August 24, 2008
The premise of this book - that chick lit is inferior and limiting and needs to be rebelled against - ticked me off so much that I had a hard time getting over the title and actually reading the stories. Genre fiction can be fun, reading is good, literary snobbishness annoys me.
When I finally got over my aversion to the cover, however, I found a strong collection of short stories inside. Most of the literary short stories I come across these days are boring tales of middle-aged people with anhedonic sex lives. The New Yorker seems to specialize in the genre, and the Francine Prose collection I picked up earlier this year offered more of the same.
Prose has a piece in this collection, and it's creative and interesting and defies anhedonia and isn't just about neurotic people and their sexual defeat. Lots of women writers, it turns out, have interesting things to say and clever ways to say them. Life is more than lust, love, emotional abandon, regret.
The writers in "This Is Not Chuck Lit" aren't afraid to take risks. They back into their stories, or write dry sentences that surprise you with their cumulative impact, or take goofy premises and craft them into believability. This book contains the best artistic response I've seen so far to Sept. 11, 2001, and I didn't even know that's what I was reading until I came upon the story's final pages.
Sure, a couple of writers stretch too far and wind up with dull stories or pieces that don't quite come together. Their failures are small, and the successes in this book are large.
I especially enjoyed "The Thing Around Your Neck," by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; "Selling the General," by Jennifer Egan; "The Seventy-two-Ounce Challenge" by Dika Lam; "Embrace," by Roxana Robinson; "Joan, Jeanne, La Pucelle, Maid of Orleans," by Judy Budnitz; "Gabriella, My Heart," by Cristinia Henriquez. I'll be watching for these women's names next time I head to the book store in search of a new friend.
When I finally got over my aversion to the cover, however, I found a strong collection of short stories inside. Most of the literary short stories I come across these days are boring tales of middle-aged people with anhedonic sex lives. The New Yorker seems to specialize in the genre, and the Francine Prose collection I picked up earlier this year offered more of the same.
Prose has a piece in this collection, and it's creative and interesting and defies anhedonia and isn't just about neurotic people and their sexual defeat. Lots of women writers, it turns out, have interesting things to say and clever ways to say them. Life is more than lust, love, emotional abandon, regret.
The writers in "This Is Not Chuck Lit" aren't afraid to take risks. They back into their stories, or write dry sentences that surprise you with their cumulative impact, or take goofy premises and craft them into believability. This book contains the best artistic response I've seen so far to Sept. 11, 2001, and I didn't even know that's what I was reading until I came upon the story's final pages.
Sure, a couple of writers stretch too far and wind up with dull stories or pieces that don't quite come together. Their failures are small, and the successes in this book are large.
I especially enjoyed "The Thing Around Your Neck," by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; "Selling the General," by Jennifer Egan; "The Seventy-two-Ounce Challenge" by Dika Lam; "Embrace," by Roxana Robinson; "Joan, Jeanne, La Pucelle, Maid of Orleans," by Judy Budnitz; "Gabriella, My Heart," by Cristinia Henriquez. I'll be watching for these women's names next time I head to the book store in search of a new friend.
August 30, 2017
Short stories often depend on a gut-wrenching twist or an expose' of the darkness of the human soul to give themselves the artistic heft that comes more easily to a novel or a poem. In this collection, however, the stories were characterized more by an acuity of observation of the human condition than by that grueling turn of the screw. Some of the stories engaged with topics that were more timely a dozen years ago when they were written, and some of the characters were more compelling than others, but on the whole it was a good collection.
Individual mentions are merited as follows: "Documents of Passion Love" was memorable, but its form (excerpts from an imaginary longer work) hints at the fact that it would probably be better as a novel in the mode of Toni Morrison. I disliked the protagonist of "Selling the General" but it was probably the most engaging of the stories. "Love Machine" was an interesting speculative-fiction take on events from the news. "Embrace" moved me to tears even if it didn't deserve to. "Joan, Jeanne, La Pucelle, Maid of Orleans" variously felt interesting or like someone took the meta elements of Monty Python and the Holy Grail way too seriously. "The Recipe" read like a long poem that, having been rejected, had been reformatted with commas in place of line breaks, rendering it approximately as annoying as Donleavy's Ginger Man. Martha Witt's "Meaning of Ends" was interesting to me as a student of languages, but pointed up the fact that "alphabetical by author" may be a less effective way of organizing a collection than something thematic.
Individual mentions are merited as follows: "Documents of Passion Love" was memorable, but its form (excerpts from an imaginary longer work) hints at the fact that it would probably be better as a novel in the mode of Toni Morrison. I disliked the protagonist of "Selling the General" but it was probably the most engaging of the stories. "Love Machine" was an interesting speculative-fiction take on events from the news. "Embrace" moved me to tears even if it didn't deserve to. "Joan, Jeanne, La Pucelle, Maid of Orleans" variously felt interesting or like someone took the meta elements of Monty Python and the Holy Grail way too seriously. "The Recipe" read like a long poem that, having been rejected, had been reformatted with commas in place of line breaks, rendering it approximately as annoying as Donleavy's Ginger Man. Martha Witt's "Meaning of Ends" was interesting to me as a student of languages, but pointed up the fact that "alphabetical by author" may be a less effective way of organizing a collection than something thematic.
April 7, 2011
Note to self: if you're feeling disillusioned by modern fiction, don't, for the love of god, go flouncing on down to the library to check out even more modern fiction to read.
This book makes me despair: this is the best that the ladywriters of America have to offer? It's sad, but these stories feel and read lifelessly -- as if animated by a special kind of vegetable consciousness. To judge by the proferred stories, there is not a budding Toni Morrison, Marilynne Robinson, Dorothy Parker, or Joyce Carol Oates among the listed author(esses). I had higher hopes for Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, but maybe this isn't the medium that best showcases her writing chops. The Jennifer Egan piece was one of the weakest, most outlandish ones from Goon Squad. Even the story about coming out gay in Panama and the story by the token Chinese-American author (always two categories near and dear to my heart) fell flat; each attempting revelation, soaring epiphany, life-changing acceptance of the flawed human self, but mostly just sputtering and nudging along the ground, exhausted. Kind of like Buzz and Woody on their rocket ship/skateboard at the end of Toy Story 1. "Failure to launch..."
Also, why does everyone in here write the same way? What I'd give for a line of Morrison's or Robinson's that reads like it'd wandered in accidentally from a poetry conference.
(At least I found Ava Bean and Embrace quite moving.)
This book makes me despair: this is the best that the ladywriters of America have to offer? It's sad, but these stories feel and read lifelessly -- as if animated by a special kind of vegetable consciousness. To judge by the proferred stories, there is not a budding Toni Morrison, Marilynne Robinson, Dorothy Parker, or Joyce Carol Oates among the listed author(esses). I had higher hopes for Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, but maybe this isn't the medium that best showcases her writing chops. The Jennifer Egan piece was one of the weakest, most outlandish ones from Goon Squad. Even the story about coming out gay in Panama and the story by the token Chinese-American author (always two categories near and dear to my heart) fell flat; each attempting revelation, soaring epiphany, life-changing acceptance of the flawed human self, but mostly just sputtering and nudging along the ground, exhausted. Kind of like Buzz and Woody on their rocket ship/skateboard at the end of Toy Story 1. "Failure to launch..."
Also, why does everyone in here write the same way? What I'd give for a line of Morrison's or Robinson's that reads like it'd wandered in accidentally from a poetry conference.
(At least I found Ava Bean and Embrace quite moving.)
March 5, 2009
Picked this one up at the library's used book sale and flew through it. I found the title somewhat misleading, as the collection of short stories touts itself as not being anything like what is considered "chick lit," yet most of the stories dealt with love and relationships.
Still, these stories wove a tapestry of fascinating female characters - perplexing, complicated, and not one that could be mistaken as "America's Sweetheart." The story Two Days by Aimee Bender was short but the dialogue was pretty awesome, with lines like "reading the names of foods listed in black plastic stick-on letters: chili dog. Onion rings. Popsicle. Words I love to see in black plastic stick-on, words that conveyed summer to me, on this cloudly November afternoon."
Documents of Passion Love was a difficult read, as it is written with brief descriptions meant to be posted underneath archival photos, from different perspectives and times. Yet it is worth a second read to piece the mystery of the story together.
Volunteers are Shining Stars tells the tale of a volunteer at a shelter who is unnerved by the introduction of a bubbly new co-worker. Very reminiscent of James Thurber.
Readers will enjoy a departure from the usual Manhattanite looking for sample sales, love and the hottest night spot for women - and men in some cases - of character and color.
Still, these stories wove a tapestry of fascinating female characters - perplexing, complicated, and not one that could be mistaken as "America's Sweetheart." The story Two Days by Aimee Bender was short but the dialogue was pretty awesome, with lines like "reading the names of foods listed in black plastic stick-on letters: chili dog. Onion rings. Popsicle. Words I love to see in black plastic stick-on, words that conveyed summer to me, on this cloudly November afternoon."
Documents of Passion Love was a difficult read, as it is written with brief descriptions meant to be posted underneath archival photos, from different perspectives and times. Yet it is worth a second read to piece the mystery of the story together.
Volunteers are Shining Stars tells the tale of a volunteer at a shelter who is unnerved by the introduction of a bubbly new co-worker. Very reminiscent of James Thurber.
Readers will enjoy a departure from the usual Manhattanite looking for sample sales, love and the hottest night spot for women - and men in some cases - of character and color.
April 27, 2013
A diverse collection from some incredibly strong writers. Yes, they all happen to be women, and I understand that that's the point of this collection, but I don't care about their genders as much as I care about the sheer talent contained in this book.
This is one of the best collections I’ve read recently, right up there with The Best American Short Stories 2012 and Nathan Englander’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank. “Selling the General” was a re-read for me; I first encountered it in A Visit From the Goon Squad. I forget how good Jennifer Egan is until I read her again; she surprises me anew every time. “Love Machine” was fantastically twisted; “Embrace” was heart-stopping; and “The Epiphany Branch” was funny, politically incorrect, and touching. I loved the anachronistic “Joan, Jeanne, La Pucelle, Maid of Orléans” and couldn’t get enough of “Gabriella, My Heart” — it was like a novel crammed into twenty pages, in the best possible way. The only disappointment was that the last two stories were possibly the weakest, so the collection didn’t end on a high note for me. That’s not to say that the two final stories were bad, because they weren’t; they just weren’t as mind-blowing as the others.
All in all: worth reading, worth owning, and opened my eyes to a bevy of amazing, read-more-by-her authors.
This is one of the best collections I’ve read recently, right up there with The Best American Short Stories 2012 and Nathan Englander’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank. “Selling the General” was a re-read for me; I first encountered it in A Visit From the Goon Squad. I forget how good Jennifer Egan is until I read her again; she surprises me anew every time. “Love Machine” was fantastically twisted; “Embrace” was heart-stopping; and “The Epiphany Branch” was funny, politically incorrect, and touching. I loved the anachronistic “Joan, Jeanne, La Pucelle, Maid of Orléans” and couldn’t get enough of “Gabriella, My Heart” — it was like a novel crammed into twenty pages, in the best possible way. The only disappointment was that the last two stories were possibly the weakest, so the collection didn’t end on a high note for me. That’s not to say that the two final stories were bad, because they weren’t; they just weren’t as mind-blowing as the others.
All in all: worth reading, worth owning, and opened my eyes to a bevy of amazing, read-more-by-her authors.
May 28, 2007
I chose This Is Not Chick Lit for book club because we don't usually pick anthologies, and I wanted us to read some contemporary women authors. I was also curious to see if the whole "chick lit" thing would provoke discussion. Indeed, a lively discussion was had. Most of us felt that although chick lit may not be high literature, it has its place and shouldn't be relegated to the Harlequin romance section, and that chick lit, as a genre, offers more than its stereotype. We also discussed the anti-chick-lit chick-lit cover.
High points in the anthology: "Volunteers are Shining Stars," Curtis Sittenfeld's exploration of the fine line between crazy and not crazy; Jennifer Egan's "Selling the General," in which a Central American dictator gets a PR makeover; Judy Budnitz's "Jean, Jeanne, La Pucelle, Maid of Orleans," wherein Joan of Arc's crusade is captured by a reality television crew; and Roxana Robinson's "Embrace," the tale of an evolving marriage forced to endure tragedy. Overall, I give high marks to This Is Not Chick Lit. As with any anthology it contains some stinkers, but there are also some thought-provoking stories.
High points in the anthology: "Volunteers are Shining Stars," Curtis Sittenfeld's exploration of the fine line between crazy and not crazy; Jennifer Egan's "Selling the General," in which a Central American dictator gets a PR makeover; Judy Budnitz's "Jean, Jeanne, La Pucelle, Maid of Orleans," wherein Joan of Arc's crusade is captured by a reality television crew; and Roxana Robinson's "Embrace," the tale of an evolving marriage forced to endure tragedy. Overall, I give high marks to This Is Not Chick Lit. As with any anthology it contains some stinkers, but there are also some thought-provoking stories.
July 11, 2007
This is a wonderful intro to a whole range of emerging female writers, so if you are like me and you search out new writers before committing to a whole novel, then this is a great anthology to use. Some stand-out stories are: "The Thing Around Your Neck" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, whose Half a Yellow Sun I'm putting on m TBR list; Holiday Rheinhold's curiously callous tale, "Gabe"; the amusing family drama "The 72-ounce Steak Challenge" by Dika Lam; and Roxana Robinson's wrenching, moving story "Embrace" that has been one of the most accurate and mellifluous depictions of marriage I've ever read. There are other great ones too. As with most anthologies, it is a jarring experience to move from one writer's world immediately into the next, especially since here there isn't much of a common thread since the only thing linking these writers are that they are female and have had limited exposure. Also, the cover art has that cool starkness that everyone on the subway wants to check out.
January 30, 2008
This was a fun collection of short stories to read...it certainly is not "chick lit." It turned me on to a slew of new (to me) authors I can't wait check out. I thought the approaches of Carolyn Ferrell and Judy Budnitz were particularly creative, got me excited about starting up my first Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie book, and of course I'm eternally devoted to Aimee Bender--although the story selected for this book is not as fanciful as those in her other collections. My favorite is possibly "Selling the General" by Jennifer Egan, which initially, when I heard her on NPR (where I found out about this collection--Talk of the Nation), didn't spark much curiosity, but the read was really fabulous. The only two stories I didn't much care for were those of Binnie Kirshenbaum (the story itself was so-so, but the last two lines made me want to vomit) and Lynne Tillman (I just stopped reading it...felt too ostentatious for my liking, abstract enough to make me not care). Overall, though, this is a provocative and entertaining read. Check it out!
October 22, 2008
A good if not great collection. Contains a good variety of short stories, from the historical fantasy of "Documents of Passion Love" by Carolyn Ferrell to the offbeat but slightly disturbing "Selling the General" by Jennifer Egan, no two stories are the same. My favorite was "Volunteers are Shining Stars" by Curtis Sittenfeld, whose narrator at first seems a smart, kind, self-aware volunteer at a shelter for battered women and their children, but who ends up being a deluded, anti-social, unapologetic paranoid. It's good, really.
Nothing else really stands out that much except maybe "The Red Coat" by Caitlin Macy whose narrator ends up being another almost anti-social, passive-aggressive woman who doesn't deal well with her own insecurities and jealousies. That sort of seems to be a theme of the book which bills itself as the antidote to Bridget Jones Diary, The Devil Wears Prada, etc. It's definitely not those things, and that's what makes it an engaging read. Not many happy endings here, which is kind of like life, no?
Nothing else really stands out that much except maybe "The Red Coat" by Caitlin Macy whose narrator ends up being another almost anti-social, passive-aggressive woman who doesn't deal well with her own insecurities and jealousies. That sort of seems to be a theme of the book which bills itself as the antidote to Bridget Jones Diary, The Devil Wears Prada, etc. It's definitely not those things, and that's what makes it an engaging read. Not many happy endings here, which is kind of like life, no?
June 20, 2007
I read this off an on, picking it up and going through a story or two when I had a few spare moments. While I understand that these are some of the most celebrated contemporary female authors, not all the stories were as impressive or thought-provoking as others. Those that stood out as above average were The Thing Around Your Neck, The Seventy-two-Ounce Steak Challenge, The Matthew Effect and Meaning of Ends. The others seemed a bit more obvious to me, and these I found a bit more stimulating and complex.
Overall, though, a worthwhile read, even if just to stretch one's boundaries and explore different writers.
Overall, though, a worthwhile read, even if just to stretch one's boundaries and explore different writers.
December 31, 2008
My friend Don made me a present of this book a few years ago, but recently picked it up again. The stories are just excellent. Particularly "Selling the General." Very vivid and suspenseful with strong characterization. "Gabe" is one I often use in class that gets a very strong reaction. It has a strong voice, humor, pathos and two unforgettable characters. Like all collections, not every story hits one out of the park, but this group is solid. And I love the cover!
November 2, 2007
Some of these writers are f*cking baller. I was bowled over by some of the short stories. I'd say 2-3 of them are only so-so, but the rest? The wordplay, the veracity, the audacity. It's basically like taking a glass of ice cold lemonade on a hot day. Sweet, sour, and refreshing. A delectable read that people should be bold enough to yank off the bookshelves.
July 4, 2007
Honestly, I picked this up for the title, which I love. But I liked it a lot - there's a wide variety of stories, not all of them focusing on female characters, and I liked all of them. My favorite was the story where Joan of Arc is followed around by a documentary crew who want to put her on TV.
October 7, 2026
This is a somewhat diverse collection of short stories in style and substance, considering that issues of race and class are largely absent from most stories. All are finely written. There are a few romances, just not of the kind you find in “chick lit.” This is also not a collection guided by a feminist perspective, although most stories are from the point of view of a female character. There is a general lack of an ideological axe to grind, replaced by a healthy curiosity about women who may be part of the author’s world, but are very different from themselves.
Many stories are about women who are not especially likable, or likable at all. Loneliness, isolation, lack of self awareness, and self sabotaging are commonplace. In Curtis Sittenfeld, “Volunteers are Shining Stars,” a young volunteer at a day care center in a homeless shelter is annoyed and alarmed by a naive new volunteer to a degree that is pathological. In Binnie Kirshenbaum, “The Matthew Effect,” a married college professor who is oh so tasteful and sophisticated finds herself lusting after a student athlete who is neither nice nor smart, but is flirtatious. This cold and tawdry tale is told with dry and pungent wit, but left me feeling empty. In Mary Gordon, “The Epiphany Branch,” an older woman treasures knowledge and education in a severe way that cuts her off from other people. In Jennifer Davis, “Ava Bean,” a financially struggling woman who is caring for an ailing, alchoholic, unappealing former actress has a decision to make - discretely poison the pathetic actress as her boyfriend urges or wait until the expected natural demise, to collect a promised inheritance. She admits she’s not a good person, but is this a step too far? In my favorite story, Kaitlyn Macy, “The Red Dress,” an aspiring middle class woman who is also a stay at home wife, hires a cleaning woman (a brash and efficient Ukrainian) after learning that all the women in her circle have cleaning ladies. Yet as a proud cleaner herself, hostility lurks behind her surface fairness and sympathy toward her new employee. (This is one story where perceptions of class are important.) Jennifer Egan, “Selling the General,” a public relations professional desperate for a deep pocketed client finds one in a monstrous Latin American dictator (hey, your profession comes first) which puts her and her daughter in danger. This satire is both comic and suspenseful. I see why Egan is such an acclaimed writer.
Some characters are likable. In Aimee Bender, “Two Days,” a woman guided by intuition meets a man from the world of facts in a bookstore - he is browsing a book about “a war no one ever heard of” (the Korean War), while she is looking for photos of clowns in art books, since her friend told her about their desperation. They have a date on the beach. She is “so ready to love him,” but what kind of chemistry can they have? Dika Lam, “The Seventytwo ounce Steak,” a wise cracking sister meets up with her errant sister, who has rejected her parents expectations to become a professional. Her sister revels in winning all you can eat contests, and the more sensible sister gets to see her in action. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “The Thing Around Your Neck,” is a most interesting story about how strange (many examples are given) America appears to a Nigerian immigrant escaping poverty in Lagos. Here poor Americans are fat and rich Americans thin, and there are vegetarians when her family treasured the small amount of meat they consumed. She succumbs to a persistent suitor who actually is knowledgable about Africa, but are their backgrounds too different for this relationship to work? Cristina Henriquez, “Gabriella, My Heart,” a bittersweet story where an earnest young man realizes (at first with horror) that he is attracted to another man.
Some stories lost me. I found Carolyn Ferrell’s tale of an interracial marriage in the Jim Crow South to be far fetched. I didn’t have the patience for Lynne Tillman and Martha Witt’s stream of consciousness pieces which are hard to follow and appear to be more philosophical meditations than stories. Stories set in the future (Samantha Hunt) or in a kind of time travel (Judy Budnitz) are not my cup of tea - somehow cynical journalists reporting on Joan of Arc is not interesting to me, although Hunt’s description of an FBI programmed sex robot interacting with Ted Kaczynski is entertaining.
The collection is billed as “Original Stories by America’s Best Women Writers.” Well, that’s overstatement, but many are excellent and all worthy of consideration (apologies to a few I did not mention). I especially enjoyed the way Bender, Sittenfeld, Macy, Lam, and Adichie convincingly took you inside the minds of their protagonists. And Jennifer Egan is a blast.
Some
Many stories are about women who are not especially likable, or likable at all. Loneliness, isolation, lack of self awareness, and self sabotaging are commonplace. In Curtis Sittenfeld, “Volunteers are Shining Stars,” a young volunteer at a day care center in a homeless shelter is annoyed and alarmed by a naive new volunteer to a degree that is pathological. In Binnie Kirshenbaum, “The Matthew Effect,” a married college professor who is oh so tasteful and sophisticated finds herself lusting after a student athlete who is neither nice nor smart, but is flirtatious. This cold and tawdry tale is told with dry and pungent wit, but left me feeling empty. In Mary Gordon, “The Epiphany Branch,” an older woman treasures knowledge and education in a severe way that cuts her off from other people. In Jennifer Davis, “Ava Bean,” a financially struggling woman who is caring for an ailing, alchoholic, unappealing former actress has a decision to make - discretely poison the pathetic actress as her boyfriend urges or wait until the expected natural demise, to collect a promised inheritance. She admits she’s not a good person, but is this a step too far? In my favorite story, Kaitlyn Macy, “The Red Dress,” an aspiring middle class woman who is also a stay at home wife, hires a cleaning woman (a brash and efficient Ukrainian) after learning that all the women in her circle have cleaning ladies. Yet as a proud cleaner herself, hostility lurks behind her surface fairness and sympathy toward her new employee. (This is one story where perceptions of class are important.) Jennifer Egan, “Selling the General,” a public relations professional desperate for a deep pocketed client finds one in a monstrous Latin American dictator (hey, your profession comes first) which puts her and her daughter in danger. This satire is both comic and suspenseful. I see why Egan is such an acclaimed writer.
Some characters are likable. In Aimee Bender, “Two Days,” a woman guided by intuition meets a man from the world of facts in a bookstore - he is browsing a book about “a war no one ever heard of” (the Korean War), while she is looking for photos of clowns in art books, since her friend told her about their desperation. They have a date on the beach. She is “so ready to love him,” but what kind of chemistry can they have? Dika Lam, “The Seventytwo ounce Steak,” a wise cracking sister meets up with her errant sister, who has rejected her parents expectations to become a professional. Her sister revels in winning all you can eat contests, and the more sensible sister gets to see her in action. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “The Thing Around Your Neck,” is a most interesting story about how strange (many examples are given) America appears to a Nigerian immigrant escaping poverty in Lagos. Here poor Americans are fat and rich Americans thin, and there are vegetarians when her family treasured the small amount of meat they consumed. She succumbs to a persistent suitor who actually is knowledgable about Africa, but are their backgrounds too different for this relationship to work? Cristina Henriquez, “Gabriella, My Heart,” a bittersweet story where an earnest young man realizes (at first with horror) that he is attracted to another man.
Some stories lost me. I found Carolyn Ferrell’s tale of an interracial marriage in the Jim Crow South to be far fetched. I didn’t have the patience for Lynne Tillman and Martha Witt’s stream of consciousness pieces which are hard to follow and appear to be more philosophical meditations than stories. Stories set in the future (Samantha Hunt) or in a kind of time travel (Judy Budnitz) are not my cup of tea - somehow cynical journalists reporting on Joan of Arc is not interesting to me, although Hunt’s description of an FBI programmed sex robot interacting with Ted Kaczynski is entertaining.
The collection is billed as “Original Stories by America’s Best Women Writers.” Well, that’s overstatement, but many are excellent and all worthy of consideration (apologies to a few I did not mention). I especially enjoyed the way Bender, Sittenfeld, Macy, Lam, and Adichie convincingly took you inside the minds of their protagonists. And Jennifer Egan is a blast.
Some
September 3, 2017
This collection was ok, probably more like 2.5 stars. I'm not a huge short story fan, so take my opinion with a grain of salt, and this didn't really do it for me.
The introduction shows it was written at a different time in feminism, when femininity wasn't feminist and "chick lit" was looked down upon by feminists. I definitely don't think that all female characters have to be likable, but most of these stories' characters were annoying, mean, and hard to connect with.
The two stories that I enjoyed the most were Cristina Henriquez's and Dika Lam's, so I look forward to checking out more of their fiction.
The introduction shows it was written at a different time in feminism, when femininity wasn't feminist and "chick lit" was looked down upon by feminists. I definitely don't think that all female characters have to be likable, but most of these stories' characters were annoying, mean, and hard to connect with.
The two stories that I enjoyed the most were Cristina Henriquez's and Dika Lam's, so I look forward to checking out more of their fiction.
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