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Single, Carefree, Mellow

Katherine Heiny

3.52 · Rating details · 4,393 ratings · 645 reviews

Single, Carefree, Mellow is that rare and wonderful thing: a debut that is superbly accomplished, endlessly entertaining, and laugh-out-loud funny.

Maya is in love with both her boyfriend and her boss. Sadie’s lover calls her as he drives to meet his wife at marriage counseling. Gwen pines for her roommate, a man who will hold her hand but then tells her that her palm is sw ...more

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Hardcover, 221 pages

Published February 3rd 2015 by Knopf

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Sep 22, 2014 eb rated it it was amazing

One of the most delightful and real and well-written story collections I've read in years. I can already imagine the complaints about this book—actually, I don't have to imagine, because I've heard them from my coworkers. "Too much adultery!" "I don't like any of the characters!" "I don't understand WHY Maya is cheating on her nice fiance!" "I hate it that the women admit that they're pretty and care about being pretty in the first place!" To all of those I would say, yep, it can be very uncomfo ...more

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Jul 15, 2016 Trudi rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: short-stories, love-actually, modern-lit, 2016, friendship-women

She held the thought of Marcus in her mind, like a Saint Christopher medal, or a dream catcher, or maybe just a hidden flask of whiskey in her purse--something that made survival possible.

Yes. This one was a real surprise for me (the good kind), since normally you would never catch me willingly picking up a collection of short stories by an unknown (to me) author. And the cover is bubblegum pink (another strike). And features a blurb about how it "gives women's interior lives the gravity they so richly deserve." Errm, okay? I guess?

Sometimes, you just gotta take a chance and try something waaaay outside your normal reading wheelhouse.

In this instance, the risk paid off. This collection is DE-LIGHT-FUL. Funny, poignant, and filled with insights great and small. I'm a tough nut to crack when it comes to short stories, but the author made me putty in her hands, with her breezy, witty prose and smart, relatable characters. Okay -- maybe not too relatable -- I'm not married, I've never cheated, and I don't have kids -- but there's something about the way these women move through their lives and think about the world around them that is instantly recognizable and resonated within me like a tuning fork vibration.

For readers seeking more of a novella experience, three of the stories -- "Single, Carefree, Mellow," "Dark Matter," and "Grendel's Mother" -- actually feature the same characters (Maya and Rhodes) as their relationship transitions from dating, to marriage, to having their first child. I loved reading about these two, and if the author ever wants to write a whole book on what these two are up to now, I'd be all over that.

These are grown-up stories, featuring adult problems and fears and betrayals and epiphanies. But never losing sight of life's absurdities, and that if we haven't learned to laugh at ourselves we're just doing it wrong. Because humans are ridiculous.

I'm also going to pair this book with Aziz Ansari's Netflix original Master of None, which just received four Emmy nominations: Outstanding Comedy Series, Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy, and two more nods to Ansari for writing and directing. Heiny and Ansari both prove romantic comedies don't always have to revert to the predictable and overly familiar chick-lit tropes. Unique characters and emotionally resonant themes elevate the stories they're telling to notably and satisfyingly above par. ...more

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Jan 11, 2017 Julie rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Too many adulteries and extramarital stuff, couldn't relate to this "American" girl. The writing wasn't so bad and I laughed twice. Wouldn't give it to anyone to read honestly

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Feb 07, 2015 Jenna rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2015-reading-challenge, reviewed, poor-choices, favorite-reads-of-2015, small-town-neighborhood-or-suburb, favorite-short-stories

3.5 stars. (Update: I'm rounding up to 4 because the stories are sticking with me over time.)

I'm sure someone else has already called this, and I am just inadvertently repeating it, but: Chick Lit as written by a suburbanized Dorothy Parker or Anita Loos (and please know these are writers I hold in very high regard). Hold on to that Dorothy Parker reference, as I will be returning to it when I discuss the book's redeeming qualities... after this brief message.

This is a book of short stories in w

3.5 stars. (Update: I'm rounding up to 4 because the stories are sticking with me over time.)

I'm sure someone else has already called this, and I am just inadvertently repeating it, but: Chick Lit as written by a suburbanized Dorothy Parker or Anita Loos (and please know these are writers I hold in very high regard). Hold on to that Dorothy Parker reference, as I will be returning to it when I discuss the book's redeeming qualities... after this brief message.

This is a book of short stories in which Most of the protagonists are fundamentally or habitually self-centered, educated, young, attractive, upper-middle-class, suburban white women who are married or about to be married (usually to a mild-mannered, nice, clueless guy who works in a tech firm or economics); have children or are about to have children; and, if not yet full-time mothering, may work for about twelve hours a week in a bookish or writerly kind of job. Oh, and lest I forget: as noted in many other reviews here, pretty much all of the women are having affairs (usually with a mild-mannered, nice, clueless guy who is also married, a little older, and works in some bookish or academic kind of job).

I see that many other reviewers are disconcerted by all this rampant affair-having. Many of the reviews decry the book for supposedly advocating affairs without consequences. Now, I think there are many legit reasons to not love this book, many of which could relate to the omnipresence of homogenous main characters blithely having homogenous extramarital affairs. However, I think the suggestion that the book advocates such affairs, just because the main characters don't necessarily get caught or punished, is as silly as saying that murder mysteries advocate murdering.

Now, the book may more justifiably offend a reader with its occasional repetitiveness and shallow characterization. Seriously: the main characters are literally indistinguishable from one another. Sometimes the same main character reappears in several stories, and sometimes the main character is different; it honestly does not matter because they are all exactly the same person. And they really are All Always Already having affairs, to the point where the affairs don't even seem to be the point anymore and kind of become background noise. Like, the car alarm can only go off so long before you tune it out.

Because everyone's having an affair from story to story, it stops being really interesting or notable, except for to note that you have to admit it's different to have a book where the affairs are Not the focal point or a big effing deal. Especially if it's women having the affairs! I guess this was somewhat refreshing, if you want to put a positive spin on it, but I understand some may not want or be able to do that, so - let's move on.

So just assume the affairs are just happening left and right throughout these stories, and that the stories may not necessarily be "about" these affairs, at least not entirely. So what else is going on? Well, admittedly a couple of the stories do show the shared protagonist's modest personal growth and maturation at various snapshots in time. Several of the stories have touching, humorous characterizations of being a mother in the age of expected perfection and professional mommyhood. There are some good, realistic (and emotionally healthy!) depictions of female friendship and fellowship (including with oft-maligned women relatives, like mothers-in-law). Some stories feature neighborhood cul-de-sac relationships and power dynamics: HBO's Girls meets Desperate Housewives.

Is all of this enough to raise the book beyond the level of typical chick lit, or a sitcom, or a really good Super Bowl commercial? Maaaaybe, maybe not, but - here's where we get back to Dorothy Parker. Heiny is a really good writer with a unique, witty, concise style and voice that kept me reading. (With regard to the concision - yeah, it read sort of like Hemingway, only as a woman, not intoxicated, and with a sense of humor, writing present-day, high-caliber chick lit.) How good this first book is or is not, I'm not sure, but I do know for sure that Heiny has writing talent and that I'd happily check out more of her future work to see where else she can go with it.

A word about the (great) title: Is it ironic? Does it have a double meaning? Is it a mischievous clue as to what Heiny is trying to accomplish? Maybe in part. The characters in the stories are single, carefree, and mellow in that (as the unhappy reviewers noted) they behave in an unfettered way, do what they want (which seems to be have affairs), and aren't even necessarily wracked with guilt about it. However, the title also seems ironic in that the characters are mostly Not single, and also neither carefree nor mellow in that they don't seem especially happy or guilt-free either, despite their attempts to embrace hedonism. There is definitely an overarching tone of (damned if you do, damned if you don't) nihilism here, which seems very Modernist and hence reminiscent of writers like Parker and Hemingway. However, if you can get to the end of this book, the characters do seem to be -- slowly and often misguidedly -- but ultimately -- trying to resist this overarching meaninglessness and to gain insight into self/other and truer connection to others. Which is a human condition worth reading about.

The phrase "Single, Carefree, Mellow" is also both the title of and a key phrase in what I found to be the best story in the book, a story that also notably achieves the rare and accomplished feat of featuring an aging dog in a way that is tearjerking but does not seem exploitative or like a cheap and easy unearned shortcut. I would also recommend "That Dance You Do" as one of the funniest stories and best "motherhood" stories; "Grendel's Mother"; and "The Rhett Butlers."

You just have to give this one a read to see whether you like it! It's that kind of book.

...more

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Jan 28, 2015 Jennifer rated it liked it

Shelves: adult-content, short-stories-and-novellas, read-2015, stand-alone-novel, listened-to-audiobook

Single, Carefree, Mellow: Stories is a collection of short stories written by author: Katherine Heiny. I experienced this collection via audio, which was read by a full cast. The short stories are listed in order below, along with their narrators, individual ratings (based on my personal enjoyment), and a brief review. An average of the ratings below equals 2.63 stars, which I rounded up to 3 on goodreads. Many of these stories didn't leave much of an impression on me, or they left too much of a ...more

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Dec 15, 2014 Elyse Walters rated it liked it

Shelves: netgalley

These are short stories about men and woman.

Topics include cheating, gossip, New York life, drinks at the Bar, A Young girl with the older man, A mother giving a birthday party for her child....
Bad relationships -sex - lovers -boyfriends -girlfriends -ex-wives....etc.

Here is short review of a few of the stories:

In "The Dive Bar", Sasha is a single woman who is dating a married man named Carson. Carson's wife, Anne, calls Sasha wanting to meet for a drink.
Sasha says to Anne, "Well, all my life ...more

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Feb 27, 2015 Desiree rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Every story, every single one, included some level of adultery. I could've handled one, maybe two, but 300+ pages of stories where the main character is somehow a participant in adultery, whether the cheater or the person the married person is cheating with, was too much. I started thinking, "Is adultery this common? Does everyone do it? Am I overreacting?" Because no one in the book, not in any of the stories, appeared to have any moral or ethical objections to the practice. Moreover, no one, s ...more

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Jan 20, 2015 Ami rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites-of-2014, favorites-of-2015

WOW. Just wow, wow, wow.

I expected basically nothing from this short story collection (never heard of the author before, hadn't heard any early buzz online) and it completely blew me away.

These are short stories in the vein of Melissa Banks' Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing--they are smart about relationships and beautifully written. They are FUNNY. I mean hilarious. I was giggling so hard while reading the bed shook. I highlighted so many passages with the hope of sharing here, but when I w ...more

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Feb 21, 2015 Melissa rated it liked it

Shelves: she-and-or-they-but-not-he

Relentless, relentless adultery. If that's your bag, look no further; myself, I was a little dazed at the end from the unremitting hanky-panky.

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Jan 30, 2015 Kerri rated it liked it

Shelves: arc, netgalley, 2015, short-stories

I guess "Single, Carefree, Mellow" sells better than "Taken, Adulterous, Liars" as happened to be the case with the majority of the short stories here. The dark sense of humor saved it from being a complete flop for me.

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Aug 02, 2015 Karys McEwen rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This is the kind of book where I involuntarily make noises and can’t help gushing out loud during reading. It is evoking a serious, audible reaction from me. All of the tales are about women in various states of love and relationships (and so far none of them are single…): unrequited, long-term, other woman, online, and platonic but wanting more. They are darkly funny and incredibly intuitive. I read sentences and paragraphs that so perfectly sum up feelings I did not know how to describe. I’m i ...more

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Feb 11, 2015 Karen M rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2015

Originally reviewed on One More Page...

[I received a copy of Single, Carefree, Mellow from its Canadian publisher HarperCollins Canada. This does not affect my opinion of the book]

When I opened the package containing Katherine Heiny’s first book Single, Carefree, Mellow, I instantly knew that it was the perfect read for Valentine’s Day and that I would want to devour it for the occasion. (Never mind the fact that I actually had a Valentine’s date.) The novel has been blurbed by Lena Dunham, who Originally reviewed on One More Page...

[I received a copy of Single, Carefree, Mellow from its Canadian publisher HarperCollins Canada. This does not affect my opinion of the book]

When I opened the package containing Katherine Heiny’s first book Single, Carefree, Mellow, I instantly knew that it was the perfect read for Valentine’s Day and that I would want to devour it for the occasion. (Never mind the fact that I actually had a Valentine’s date.) The novel has been blurbed by Lena Dunham, who calls it “magical,” and for some reason I knew that this was going to be the book for me. I wasn’t wrong.

In Single, Carefree, Mellow, the complexities of relationships and hook-ups are expertly explored through a series of short stories. These stories are all focused on the point-of-view of women (amazing!), and reminded me of shows like Sex & the City and Girls for its honest and blunt portrayal of the ups and downs of love (or lust, in some cases). There’s no sugar-coating to be found here, and it’s refreshing and fun to read.

What made this collection especially interesting was the fact that these women are not perfect. In some ways, they are also not very nice. Infidelity is not an uncommon theme in this collection (so beware, if you aren’t a fan of reading that kind of stuff), but I personally love reading about women who are unabashedly flawed. Did I cringe in some parts? Yes. Did I yell “nooo!” at parts? Yes. But I secretly thanked Heiny for writing characters that are so real that by the end of the book I felt like I had just had a long chat with some girlfriends.

On top of that, these short stories are funny. Sure, the women may not always be in great situations, but the stories sneak in a lot of observational and subtle humour that had me chuckling as I read. In one story, a woman secretly nicknames her next-door-neighbour Chicken Pox. Chicken Pox!

Verdict: Overall, this is a very strong collection of well-crafted stories that I enjoyed. (Warning: there is a story that is a bit darker than others near the end of the book, but hopefully the payoff satisfies you in a way that it did for me.) I loved how Heiny was able to capture how messy and fickle the human heart can be, and loved it even more for how it kept the tone and pacing interesting by playing with tenses and injecting humour into the stories.

Read if: You love female-focused books, are a fan of shows like Sex & the City and Girls, want to read a collection of stories that is realistic, funny, and fresh. ...more

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Feb 18, 2015 rachel rated it liked it

Shelves: lady-lit, heartbreakers, 2015

I found this collection of stories a bit uneven, but mostly good. Heiny does a lot of changing perspective (she uses first, second, and third person here) and even with a unified theme of adultery running throughout much of the collection and some very strong stories, I thought that read a bit gimmicky, trying to tell stories from so many different perspectives and styles. But I hate both list formats ("Thoughts of a Bridesmaid," my least favorite story) and second person ("That Dance You Do") - ...more

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Feb 20, 2017 Alan rated it really liked it

Shelves: short-stories

3.5 stars but upgraded because it's funny. Very funny. I like funny. It should be retitled 'Married (or about to be), Careful (although not that careful), mellow-ish'. Wouldn't be quite as snappy, but more accurate as these stories are all about conducting affairs and not feeling that bad about it. The stories are beautifully brought together, satisfying, quite insightful, and as I say, funny, if a tiny bit glib.

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Dec 29, 2018 Ylenia rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2018-reads, yleniareads-library

One of the best collections I’ve read in a while.

Faves: How To Give the Wrong Impression, Blue Heroin Bridge, Dark Matter.

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Sep 03, 2014 Lolly K Dandeneau rated it liked it

Heiny's collection of short stories is a series of discontent, for the characters. Rather than a spot of sunshine on happy go lucky guys and gals she gives us a more cynical look into relationships, forbidden or otherwise. Personally, I prefer the writers that expose the ugly side of our messy emotions and terrible choices. Apathetic women and mindless men inhabit the stories, in one a teen is having a slummy relationship with her history teacher, and the sexy cliché is more of a stinky hotel an ...more

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Feb 12, 2015 Alice rated it it was amazing

Every so often (and by that I mean very rarely) a book enters your life which seems to meet some deeply-subconscious, previously buried-but-intrinsic need; it seems to answer the big questions you’ve been pondering, it consumes your everyday thoughts, it gives you characters to aspire to, you feel that little bit cooler just for having it’s witty presence in your bag. You find yourself wanting to read great chunks aloud to anyone who will listen (in this case, interrupting the fiance as he strug ...more

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Apr 24, 2015 Tuck rated it really liked it

Shelves: knopf, ill, oh-loyd-i-wanna-be-hearkbroken, short-stories

debut short stories, smart, info full, dialogy, linked stories, of women controlling their own sex lives, their own lives, and for good or bad, having lots of sex with lots of people, and/or thinking about it anyway. also illustrates just what a small town nyc is. author heiny's modernism reminds me of barthelme's novel of a south texas 'retirement' community. no really, it does. There Must Be Some Mistake: A Novel

her relations of sexy pre-sex communications sets a standard cyrano would have a ...more

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Nov 05, 2017 Veronica rated it really liked it

Shelves: short-stories

The question that niggled me while I was reading Single, Carefree, Mellow: When does a story collection cross the line from thematically and stylistically cohesive, to same-y?
The conclusion I reached: When the writing is this good, who cares!

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Dec 04, 2014 Wendi rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2015, netgalley, fiction, shorts

Having been a Goodreads member since 2008 has given me the tendency to consider how many stars I'm going to rate a book even while I'm still reading it. For Single, Carefree, Mellow, I spent the majority of the time convinced I would give the book five stars.

But then I finished it and started thinking about my review and imagined dropping it down to four stars, almost exclusively because of all the affairs. But I won't - I'm going to keep it at five stars, despite all the affairs and here are th Having been a Goodreads member since 2008 has given me the tendency to consider how many stars I'm going to rate a book even while I'm still reading it. For Single, Carefree, Mellow, I spent the majority of the time convinced I would give the book five stars.

But then I finished it and started thinking about my review and imagined dropping it down to four stars, almost exclusively because of all the affairs. But I won't - I'm going to keep it at five stars, despite all the affairs and here are the two reasons why:

1. I see readers on Goodreads all the time getting all huffy about the God-awful immoral affairs in the books they read and why would they ever condone such behavior in the books they read?? So, first off, the last thing I want to do is be perceived as one of of these readers because I am not. I don't take any moral offense to the characters in my books having affairs. I'm not saying that I don't have any moral offense to people having affairs (although who knows - if you're in some sort horrific relationship and that's your escape - who am I to judge? I'm not because that's your personal business, not mine), but rather that I don't take moral offense at fictional characters in a fictional novel having affairs. Sheesh. Some people need to remember that they are reading fiction. I'm quite convinced that a real life person who wouldn't otherwise have cause or motivation to run out and have an affair is going to read about a fictional character having an affair and drop that book and run out to find a stranger to have sex with. Rather, I thought about dropping the stars because I just became sort of fatigued over all the affairs, and thought that maybe some of these women could've had better things to do or more facets to their characters than to have an affair. But because I'm more fatigued about other readers expressing their moral outrage about all these fictional(!) characters having affairs, I'm going to stand on principle alone at five full stars.

2. When I was approved by Knopf Doubleday to read this debut collection of short stories in advance, I was somehow under the impression that it was primarily about single women making their way in the world (must've been because of the title...) and so all the affairs felt like a bit of a breach of contract. But returning to the synopsis, I see my assumption was wrong because there are all sorts of obvious and even inferred suggestions of what the reader is getting themselves into here.

And really, ultimately, it's a minor quibble (despite all my going on up there). Because, otherwise, oh my goodness, this is an awesome collection.

Primarily because Heiny is so damn incredible at relating emotions in an incisive and insightful way so that the reader know that's she's been there. And the reader knows this because the reader has been there, and only someone else who has been there could possible understand what it feels like. She writes about reasons for attractions to other people than your lover (whether you act on those attractions or not), reasons for fantasizing about breaking up (again, whether one does or not), what it's like to empathize with another person because you've gone through that rough experience yourself, and how losing a dog can be even more devastating than losing a long-term lover. Although she often skillfully changes the reader's perception and judgment of a character from the beginning of the story to the end (and in the case of Maya, through three stories, returning to this particular character at three different times in her life), sometimes the stories will end with just a sentence or two that are a bit confusing, because they seem contradictory to the personality that was built up through the narrative.

Okay, so here's the thing: With most advanced copies of books, we're not really allowed to quote from the books because the copy might change before publication, and this is often frustrating. This is particularly frustrating with this collection because I want so badly to share the funny, wise, fantastic writing here. I highlighted so many section that even if I could relate them all here, I'd be hard pressed to edit them down to the top picks. I am going to share one bit, with the caveat that this is an advanced copy, so it could change by publication but it's so heartbreakingly similar to how I felt when my little dog of sixteen and a half years passed away that I cried for several minutes after finishing the story (and I rarely cry when reading):

"She was thinking that someday, possibly very soon, she would be a single, carefree, mellow, dogless person, able to date full professors and vets and whomever else she wanted. She wished this thought made her happy. She wished she could feel anything other than the purest, most leaden, darkest gray kind of sorrow."

...more

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Mar 18, 2015 Dan rated it really liked it

I found this to be a delightful and impactful read. Heiny excels at mixing humor and pathos. Here's one of my favorite parts. I think it illustrates the tone of the book perfectly:

In the days right after Josie and Billy had sex for the fourth and last time, Chicken Pox called to tell her that Diet Coke was on sale at the supermarket, two packs for ten dollars, and this put Josie in such a black mood that she lied and told Chicken Pox that she got a better deal at the supermarket way outside of t ...more

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Feb 12, 2015 Michael rated it really liked it

Shelves: arc, read-in-2015, short-stories, winter-reading-2015

People in various stages of infidelity populate the short stories collected in Katherine Heiny's Single, Carefree, Mellow. Heiny's storytelling doesn't look at the moment an affair begins or when it ends but instead delves into various characters (both men and women) at different points of being unfaithful.

One woman finds herself contemplating the end of a relationship in relation to the death of a beloved pet. Another finds herself being cheating partner finding someone new and becoming more i ...more

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Dec 15, 2014 Marisa rated it it was ok

Hum where to start, the synopsis sounded so promising with this book of short stories, which was all about betrayal, future tragedy. The synopsis sounded so entertaining. However I didn't feel the book delivered the emotional feelings in order to have made it successful, it left me feeling flat, there was just to many roads travelled and not in any real reason, it felt detached.

My thanks to Netgalley and the publisher HarpersPress/4th Estate/The Friday Project for the digital copy to review.

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Feb 27, 2015 Stephanie rated it did not like it

The description of this book calls it 'laugh-out-loud' funny...
I didn't get it.
The stories in this book center on infidelity, arrogance and sadness. I don't put down many books and I gave up on this one.

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Mar 17, 2015 Kelly Parker rated it did not like it

The worst piece of garbage I've ever read. Basically every short story included some form of infidelity, and none of the characters suffered any consequences. What kind of message was this supposed to send? I want my money back.

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Mar 09, 2015 Jeanne Boudreau rated it did not like it

If you want to read of people having affairs and justifying them, this set of stories is for you. For those of us who believe in fidelity, I don't think you will like these.

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Apr 27, 2015 Courtney Brown rated it it was amazing

Shelves: own, 2016

Love, love, love. Valentine's Day weekend was definitely the right time for this little gem of a book.

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Dec 25, 2018 Nita Kohli rated it really liked it

I read Standard Deviation at the beginning of this year and I completely loved it. In fact it is one of my favourite books of this year.
I picked this one up because I wanted to read more from this author. This book is collection of short stories and infidelity is the underlying theme in most (or all) of them. How women feel being the other one. And I liked all the stories - everything was so well written. But I did not understand the ending of most of the stories and I felt that they ended abru ...more

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Aug 29, 2018 Jessica rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: library-book

I don't know if this book was exactly what I needed to read / hear right now, or exactly the opposite.

Technically speaking, I enjoyed the use of the 2nd person narrator. Very effective.

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Feb 17, 2016 Annabeth Leong rated it liked it

This book is written with a very clean, engaging style. I found it highly readable and hard to put down—unusual in a short story collection, as I often find myself naturally wanting to take breaks between stories. Descriptions are vivid and filled with humor.

The experience of reading it, though, was weird for me. This book epitomizes what I always imagined "normal" to be. It is so straight, so white, so upper middle class. Women have best friends of a type I've always fantasized about having. P This book is written with a very clean, engaging style. I found it highly readable and hard to put down—unusual in a short story collection, as I often find myself naturally wanting to take breaks between stories. Descriptions are vivid and filled with humor.

The experience of reading it, though, was weird for me. This book epitomizes what I always imagined "normal" to be. It is so straight, so white, so upper middle class. Women have best friends of a type I've always fantasized about having. People have problems, but they are of a sort that feel almost comforting to me in their normalcy. I am not trying to discount the pain of, say, having a dog die (the subject of one of the book's best stories). It's just that there's nothing here that smacks of a certain kind of shame that I've had to live with most of my life. There is a way that I can't look away from this vision. It's fascinating and compelling, and it sort of makes me feel like I'm looking in through the glass at a bunch of things I can't afford to buy.

On the other hand, I found myself feeling there was a sort of emptiness and sameness to it. There are so, so many stories about people having affairs. And perhaps because I don't live in this otherwise perfect world, it was hard for me to feel I was getting much out of them. (I guess I read short stories for insight into the human condition, or identification, or suspense, and along these vectors I didn't feel that there was much new to say or much identification to be had). The viewpoint characters have a sort of moral indifference that is interesting to me even while it puzzles me. I just can't personally get inside this book.

I especially found myself cringing periodically at casual references to body judgement and dieting—the entire point of one story seems to be that it's horrifying to realize that one's lover has also slept with someone who's personally unappealing to you (and a lot of the unappealingness is signaled through references to that person's double chin). I'm tired of the fat=bad trope and the assumption that women can and should constantly be dieting, and that just feels sewn into the fabric of this book.

There's another aspect of the book that both fascinated and repelled me at the same time. I think it's simultaneously related to why I couldn't put the book down and also why I wasn't sure I liked it. For all the straightness to the book, over and over again it feels like the really compelling connections are those between women, particularly between the best friends. As a queer woman who's had many fraught best friend relationships, this was the place I saw myself the most, and yet what sometimes read as desire to me never seemed to come to the surface. This is one of the central mysteries of my life—when I have felt this closeness, it has meant desire, and yet I've never quite been sure what the straight best friends were feeling. Reading this book made me think of that a lot, that stuff I go through where I'm wondering what it means that I'm the person she called at this moment, not her boyfriend, then scolding myself for wondering.

I definitely liked some of the stories. One of my favorites was "How to Give the Wrong Impression," which had me rooting for the main character to get the guy even while she was being creepy and weird about her obsession with him. My other favorite was "Thoughts of a Bridesmaid," which was the story in which I most felt that latent queerness threatening to erupt.

I notice I often write the most about books I'm not sure I like. There was a lot here for me, but then at the same time the experience of reading the book made me feel like an outsider. ...more

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About Katherine Heiny

Katherine Heiny

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Katherine Heiny's fiction has been published in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Narrative,Glimmer Train, and many other places. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and children.

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“Josie thinks that the problem with being a writer is that you miss a lot of your life wondering if the things that happen to you are good enough to use in a story, and most of the time they’re not and you have to make shit up anyway.” — 3 likes

“You take Boris’s hand as he bounds along on his long legs, your signal that he has to either slow down or pull you along. He tucks both your hand and his hand into the pocket of his jacket. You look up at his face out of the corner of your eye. In the cold, you watch him breathe perfect plumes of white that match the sheepskin lining of his jacket. You think how happy you would be if Boris thought you were half as beautiful as you think he is at this moment. You walk this way for a few minutes.” — 1 likes

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