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How Strange a Season
An evocative and engrossing collection of new stories and a novella about women experiencing life’s challenges and beauty from the award-winning writer Megan Mayhew Bergman.
A recently separated woman fills a huge terrarium with endangered flowers to establish a small world only she can control in an attempt to heal her broken heart. A competitive swimmer negotiates over which days she will fulfill her wifely duties, and which days she will keep for herself. A peach farmer wonders if her orchard will survive a drought. And generations of a family in South Carolina struggle with fidelity and their cruel past, some clinging to old ways and others painfully carving new paths.
In these haunting stories, Megan Mayhew Bergman portrays women who wrestle with problematic inheritances: a modern glass house on a treacherous California cliff, a water-starved ranch, and an abandoned plantation on a river near Charleston. Bergman’s provocative prose asks the questions: what are we leaving behind for our ancestors to hold, and what price will they pay for our mistakes?
A recently separated woman fills a huge terrarium with endangered flowers to establish a small world only she can control in an attempt to heal her broken heart. A competitive swimmer negotiates over which days she will fulfill her wifely duties, and which days she will keep for herself. A peach farmer wonders if her orchard will survive a drought. And generations of a family in South Carolina struggle with fidelity and their cruel past, some clinging to old ways and others painfully carving new paths.
In these haunting stories, Megan Mayhew Bergman portrays women who wrestle with problematic inheritances: a modern glass house on a treacherous California cliff, a water-starved ranch, and an abandoned plantation on a river near Charleston. Bergman’s provocative prose asks the questions: what are we leaving behind for our ancestors to hold, and what price will they pay for our mistakes?
304 pages, Hardcover
First published March 29, 2022
50 people are currently reading
6659 people want to read
About the author
Megan Mayhew Bergman
17 books312 followersMegan Mayhew Bergman is the author of three books, Birds of a Lesser Paradise, Almost Famous Women, and How Strange a Season, forthcoming from Scribner in March 2022. She is currently writing a book on the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, also with Scribner.
She lives on a farm in Vermont with two daughters and several rescue animals, and directs the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers' Conference at Middlebury College.
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Megan studied anthropology at Wake Forest University, has an MA from Duke University, and an MFA from Bennington College. Her work was a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers and an Indie Next selection, and won the Garrett Award for Fiction in 2012. She has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the American Library in Paris.
Megan is a journalist, essayist, and critic. She has written columns on climate change and the natural world for The Guardian and The Paris Review. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Tin House, Ploughshares, Oxford American, Orion, and elsewhere. Her short fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories 2011 and 2015, and on NPR’s Selected Shorts. She was awarded the Phil Reed Environmental Writing Award for Journalism in 2020.
While at Bennington College, she served as the Associate Director of the MFA program and Director of the Robert Frost Stone House Museum. She currently teaches literature and environmental writing at Middlebury College, where she also serves as Director of the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference.
Her work has been optioned for film and translated into several languages. She’s collaborated with choreographer Annie Wang, traveled to Northern Kenya’s conflict zone with The BOMA Project, and can often be found on the coast of Georgia supporting her friends at conservation non-profit One Hundred Miles. Her photography has appeared in The Guardian, Wall Street Journal, and Audubon.
Megan recently served as a Senior Fellow at the Conservation Law Foundation. She’s currently a regular columnist at The Guardian and Audubon.
She lives on a farm in Vermont with two daughters and several rescue animals, and directs the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers' Conference at Middlebury College.
*
Megan studied anthropology at Wake Forest University, has an MA from Duke University, and an MFA from Bennington College. Her work was a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers and an Indie Next selection, and won the Garrett Award for Fiction in 2012. She has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the American Library in Paris.
Megan is a journalist, essayist, and critic. She has written columns on climate change and the natural world for The Guardian and The Paris Review. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Tin House, Ploughshares, Oxford American, Orion, and elsewhere. Her short fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories 2011 and 2015, and on NPR’s Selected Shorts. She was awarded the Phil Reed Environmental Writing Award for Journalism in 2020.
While at Bennington College, she served as the Associate Director of the MFA program and Director of the Robert Frost Stone House Museum. She currently teaches literature and environmental writing at Middlebury College, where she also serves as Director of the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference.
Her work has been optioned for film and translated into several languages. She’s collaborated with choreographer Annie Wang, traveled to Northern Kenya’s conflict zone with The BOMA Project, and can often be found on the coast of Georgia supporting her friends at conservation non-profit One Hundred Miles. Her photography has appeared in The Guardian, Wall Street Journal, and Audubon.
Megan recently served as a Senior Fellow at the Conservation Law Foundation. She’s currently a regular columnist at The Guardian and Audubon.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 109 reviews
February 13, 2023
4.5
Parent/child relationships, multigenerational family lines, grandparents and aging, the ties of womanhood, subtle queerness, the legacy of the American south, climate apocalypse, compelling characters and love and very good storytelling with strong writing!! The short story form is not dead!!
Parent/child relationships, multigenerational family lines, grandparents and aging, the ties of womanhood, subtle queerness, the legacy of the American south, climate apocalypse, compelling characters and love and very good storytelling with strong writing!! The short story form is not dead!!
April 25, 2022
Wonderful........ all about women, relationships, family......LIFE --- beautiful prose!
February 22, 2023
A surprisingly enlightining collection of short stories. This book explores the social constraints of women, and how that plays into who they are and how they perceive themselves.
December 3, 2021
The short stories were terrific but the novella never drew me in.
June 28, 2022
3.5 stars
If you’re suffering from a bad relationship or breakup and want some literary companionship (though not uplift), Megan Mayhew Bergman’s How Strange a Season is just for you. In this collection of stories, plus a novella, Bergman focuses on women (and a man and two children in the novella) whose lives are careening toward, if not into, an emotional abyss. It’s pretty grim, as these samples underscore:
-- It’s amazing how broken lovers can conjure years of hurt and let it hang there, invisible, in a room between them. How two people who are supposed to love each other best destroy one another, day after day, and with such skill.
-- Something I hate about myself: my needful heart. I’ve tried a hundred ways to disguise and disfigure it: wearing all black, cutting my bangs crooked like the truly artistic women do, feigning disinterest in the world around me. But it beats on its own program.
-- There was the house as her mother had left it—honest. The pink, gelatinous vibrator on the bed stand. The bottle of Lexapro. That was a strange and important gift, to know that the world was as fucked-up and lonely as it seemed. That a woman gathered pain and taught herself to bear it along the way.
In tightly focusing on events and situations that undo her characters’ ordered lives, Bergman’s stories are much stronger than her novella, which plots along, a sort of plantation un-romance with predictable situations and outcomes. The stories, on the other hand, are almost minimalist in portraying the mostly quiet and hidden ways that women suffer in relationships and/or their aftermath, following their trials and tribulations in getting through the day when they have no idea how they are going to or even if they want to. Bergman’s prose likewise tends toward the minimalist, with occasional outbursts of grandiloquence, usually when a character comes to some piercing realization of her fractured life.
I read one commentator who said she hoped Bergman would write a novel. My response: be careful what you wish for.
If you’re suffering from a bad relationship or breakup and want some literary companionship (though not uplift), Megan Mayhew Bergman’s How Strange a Season is just for you. In this collection of stories, plus a novella, Bergman focuses on women (and a man and two children in the novella) whose lives are careening toward, if not into, an emotional abyss. It’s pretty grim, as these samples underscore:
-- It’s amazing how broken lovers can conjure years of hurt and let it hang there, invisible, in a room between them. How two people who are supposed to love each other best destroy one another, day after day, and with such skill.
-- Something I hate about myself: my needful heart. I’ve tried a hundred ways to disguise and disfigure it: wearing all black, cutting my bangs crooked like the truly artistic women do, feigning disinterest in the world around me. But it beats on its own program.
-- There was the house as her mother had left it—honest. The pink, gelatinous vibrator on the bed stand. The bottle of Lexapro. That was a strange and important gift, to know that the world was as fucked-up and lonely as it seemed. That a woman gathered pain and taught herself to bear it along the way.
In tightly focusing on events and situations that undo her characters’ ordered lives, Bergman’s stories are much stronger than her novella, which plots along, a sort of plantation un-romance with predictable situations and outcomes. The stories, on the other hand, are almost minimalist in portraying the mostly quiet and hidden ways that women suffer in relationships and/or their aftermath, following their trials and tribulations in getting through the day when they have no idea how they are going to or even if they want to. Bergman’s prose likewise tends toward the minimalist, with occasional outbursts of grandiloquence, usually when a character comes to some piercing realization of her fractured life.
I read one commentator who said she hoped Bergman would write a novel. My response: be careful what you wish for.
May 20, 2022
Early in this excellent short story collection, there's a moment when a young woman is telling her aging grandmother "what happened in Europe" when she was 14. The situation is worrisome: too much drink, her companion running off with some guy, and now she's climbing onto a stranger's motorcycle. Her grandmother interrupts.
"'Stop. Please stop.'
And so she did. Her grandmother was dying. She knew the end of the story. She could feel it coming; any woman could."
So much packed into those three words, any woman could.
This is a writer in full command of her material -- characters, language, and above all, readers' imaginations. It is a small but powerful moment in a book packed with small powerful moments. The woman who responds to her morning orgasm: "Box checked." A relationship completely portrayed in the text a woman sends her lover when she arrives in Alaska: "Here." And not a word more.
These sharp details accumulate into a narrative voice of immense power. Its concerns: degradation of the environment, couples negotiating power in their relationships, history that is revealed in place (a vivid South dominates this book), and under it all a seething rage, like a bonfire beside a gas tank, ready at any moment to explode.
Which is to say that I loved this book, especially the larger, novella-length portion. I don't read many short story collections. This one I read twice.
"'Stop. Please stop.'
And so she did. Her grandmother was dying. She knew the end of the story. She could feel it coming; any woman could."
So much packed into those three words, any woman could.
This is a writer in full command of her material -- characters, language, and above all, readers' imaginations. It is a small but powerful moment in a book packed with small powerful moments. The woman who responds to her morning orgasm: "Box checked." A relationship completely portrayed in the text a woman sends her lover when she arrives in Alaska: "Here." And not a word more.
These sharp details accumulate into a narrative voice of immense power. Its concerns: degradation of the environment, couples negotiating power in their relationships, history that is revealed in place (a vivid South dominates this book), and under it all a seething rage, like a bonfire beside a gas tank, ready at any moment to explode.
Which is to say that I loved this book, especially the larger, novella-length portion. I don't read many short story collections. This one I read twice.
February 24, 2022
These stories, especially the novella, will leave you breathless. I am still thinking about them.
March 23, 2022
via my blog: https://bookstalkerblog.wordpress.com/
“𝑨 𝒍𝒂𝒅𝒚 𝒊𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒍𝒂𝒔𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑰 𝒘𝒂𝒏𝒕 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒕𝒐 𝒃𝒆!” 𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒎𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒚𝒆𝒍𝒍𝒆𝒅 𝒃𝒂𝒄𝒌. “𝑾𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒈𝒐𝒐𝒅 𝒅𝒊𝒅 𝒊𝒕 𝒅𝒐 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒎𝒆?”
This collection of stories by Megan Mayhew Bergman is about what we drag around, our broken love lives, our damaged families, our history. It’s about needful hearts, negotiations between partners, the deepest lows and highest of highs. The struggle with self-worth, feeling like an imposter in one’s own life and building walls or terrariums to control the only things one can. More importantly there are stories of mistakes and lost chances.
In Workhorse, a divorcée makes large scale plant installations after buying a boutique floral business from the money her mother left her. Stuck dealing with her father, who is planning his return home to Sardinia and has always steamrolled his family with his large personality and needs, she wants space, to make her own choices, to live a creative life. He feels she just wants him gone. Disappointed by her ex and his addiction, things get more challenging, not less. In Wife Days, Farrah grows up watching her mother and grandmother butt heads about how her mother is raising her. Structure versus a non-traditional, bohemian life, when all she wants is to be underwater, cutting a path swimming. Even if she knows she is an invasive species in the river. In adulthood, she is married to a ‘fresh, very controlled person’ living the privileged life in a McMansion. Is she happy? What happened during her messy years? Other stories are about having control, the upper hand, as in one tale a woman uses her mother’s Earth House to help people release rage by crushing things. She also ponders the cycles of leaving and staying. My favorite story was Inheritance where the main character, Hayes, inherits her grandmother’s glass house in California, perched on a cliff overlooking the Pacific. Having admired her grandmother, Paulina’s, courage to shuck expectations and make her own terms of existence (leaving Hayes’s mother behind in the process) she only now begins to see that she may not have known her at all. Is the future a comfort, where everything remains unknown, or does dwelling in the past, with all its familiar devils, make for a more content world?
There are stories about the ecosystem like in A Taste For Lionfish and the destruction they cause but also human failure as the character signs up to fill time after the end of a relationship. There is an orchard in Peaches where a woman sacrifices her own future happiness for family who may not give a damn about salvation. Kin that feel like a lost cause, it’s so bad her mother even thinks her own son could be the strangler. Land called Stillwood where misfortune seems to shadow the people like a curse, it is a former plantation and all that implies. Here love feels more like entrapment. Pregnancy begets marriage, a child is born and depression follows. The wife/mother ends up in a sanatorium while her husband finds a small measure of happiness with the wet nurse (who has her own baby to attend to), finally feels like Stillwood is rightfully his, until she returns. The little girl, Skip, grows up wild in spirit like her mother and conflicted about who her loyalty should be with. She has, essentially, two mothers. It is a life of betrayal, loss, and self-lies. Stillwood feels like an evil place, the wet nurse always felt it too and the river, the river holds secrets. This story is the longest and reads like a novel, rich in characters. People who fear they are living under punishment for the things their ancestors have done yet unable or unwilling to free themselves. The final story is about a hag, cousin of Eve. A being who calls the winds to howl for her suffering.
It’s a good read, an intelligent exploration on love, what we owe it. Make no mistake, it’s about how love is measured, particularly in women. How uneven all variety of partnerships are. Why does affection seem to rely on what others are getting out of you? Here, people are affirming their love and loyalty, burying their happiness for others, often settling, or rebelling against tradition and often suffering for it. They bear the weight of the past, usually in the form of bloodlines and family demands. It sometimes did feel like the author is serving up revenge and punishment for the sins of the past, a history that descendants didn’t have a hand in yet seem doomed for. Still, it was engaging and smart.
Publication Date: March 29, 2022
Scribner
“𝑨 𝒍𝒂𝒅𝒚 𝒊𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒍𝒂𝒔𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑰 𝒘𝒂𝒏𝒕 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒕𝒐 𝒃𝒆!” 𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒎𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒚𝒆𝒍𝒍𝒆𝒅 𝒃𝒂𝒄𝒌. “𝑾𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒈𝒐𝒐𝒅 𝒅𝒊𝒅 𝒊𝒕 𝒅𝒐 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒎𝒆?”
This collection of stories by Megan Mayhew Bergman is about what we drag around, our broken love lives, our damaged families, our history. It’s about needful hearts, negotiations between partners, the deepest lows and highest of highs. The struggle with self-worth, feeling like an imposter in one’s own life and building walls or terrariums to control the only things one can. More importantly there are stories of mistakes and lost chances.
In Workhorse, a divorcée makes large scale plant installations after buying a boutique floral business from the money her mother left her. Stuck dealing with her father, who is planning his return home to Sardinia and has always steamrolled his family with his large personality and needs, she wants space, to make her own choices, to live a creative life. He feels she just wants him gone. Disappointed by her ex and his addiction, things get more challenging, not less. In Wife Days, Farrah grows up watching her mother and grandmother butt heads about how her mother is raising her. Structure versus a non-traditional, bohemian life, when all she wants is to be underwater, cutting a path swimming. Even if she knows she is an invasive species in the river. In adulthood, she is married to a ‘fresh, very controlled person’ living the privileged life in a McMansion. Is she happy? What happened during her messy years? Other stories are about having control, the upper hand, as in one tale a woman uses her mother’s Earth House to help people release rage by crushing things. She also ponders the cycles of leaving and staying. My favorite story was Inheritance where the main character, Hayes, inherits her grandmother’s glass house in California, perched on a cliff overlooking the Pacific. Having admired her grandmother, Paulina’s, courage to shuck expectations and make her own terms of existence (leaving Hayes’s mother behind in the process) she only now begins to see that she may not have known her at all. Is the future a comfort, where everything remains unknown, or does dwelling in the past, with all its familiar devils, make for a more content world?
There are stories about the ecosystem like in A Taste For Lionfish and the destruction they cause but also human failure as the character signs up to fill time after the end of a relationship. There is an orchard in Peaches where a woman sacrifices her own future happiness for family who may not give a damn about salvation. Kin that feel like a lost cause, it’s so bad her mother even thinks her own son could be the strangler. Land called Stillwood where misfortune seems to shadow the people like a curse, it is a former plantation and all that implies. Here love feels more like entrapment. Pregnancy begets marriage, a child is born and depression follows. The wife/mother ends up in a sanatorium while her husband finds a small measure of happiness with the wet nurse (who has her own baby to attend to), finally feels like Stillwood is rightfully his, until she returns. The little girl, Skip, grows up wild in spirit like her mother and conflicted about who her loyalty should be with. She has, essentially, two mothers. It is a life of betrayal, loss, and self-lies. Stillwood feels like an evil place, the wet nurse always felt it too and the river, the river holds secrets. This story is the longest and reads like a novel, rich in characters. People who fear they are living under punishment for the things their ancestors have done yet unable or unwilling to free themselves. The final story is about a hag, cousin of Eve. A being who calls the winds to howl for her suffering.
It’s a good read, an intelligent exploration on love, what we owe it. Make no mistake, it’s about how love is measured, particularly in women. How uneven all variety of partnerships are. Why does affection seem to rely on what others are getting out of you? Here, people are affirming their love and loyalty, burying their happiness for others, often settling, or rebelling against tradition and often suffering for it. They bear the weight of the past, usually in the form of bloodlines and family demands. It sometimes did feel like the author is serving up revenge and punishment for the sins of the past, a history that descendants didn’t have a hand in yet seem doomed for. Still, it was engaging and smart.
Publication Date: March 29, 2022
Scribner
March 28, 2022
Fearless character full of compassion,I could not put it down! Thus is a must read .
January 13, 2022
A nice collection of stories. I enjoyed the common thread that throughout. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys books about family and relationships.
I won this book in a goodreads giveaway.
I won this book in a goodreads giveaway.
December 29, 2022
A unique collection of short stories. It was hard to become invested with such short stories. Just as my interest peaked, the story ended. The second, “Wife Days”, was my favorite. Great use of imagery and detail throughout.
April 25, 2025
I love compelling female characters. This book had me in awe.
May 9, 2025
3.5!!!
July 18, 2022
"To lose her suffering was to lose herself." Pretty much sums it up. The novella at the end seems to give birth to some mixed feelings and confusion. I agree to have gone through both. Then again... I don't like neat stories about suffering. What kind of suffering ties a neat bow to its structure? The trauma in suffering is the elusiveness.
But perhaps these stories are best listened to while feverish.
But perhaps these stories are best listened to while feverish.
August 2, 2022
Won via goodreads giveaways in exchange for an honest review, all my opinions are my own:)
(I am horrible reading things on time lately)
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3.5 stars overall I guess? Anyone want to average the ratings for me?
Workhorse: 3.5 stars 🌟
Wife days: 3 stars 🌟
The Heirloom: 3.5 stars
Inheritance: 4 stars 🌟
A Taste for Lionfish - 4 stars 🌟
Peaches, 1979 - 4 stars 🌟
Indigo Run: 3.5 stars 🌟
Night Hag: 2 stars 🌟
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Overall, a good collection of stories, had a few favorites and only one I thought was meh (that last one I thought could have done with being expanded upon more )
She's good at creating atmosphere and you feel like an observer as the characters go about their lives.
I felt removed from everything but also.. I guess invested or interested would be the right word?
Wouldn't read again but I had a good time reading everything..just wish I had more time to read these days.
(I am horrible reading things on time lately)
---
3.5 stars overall I guess? Anyone want to average the ratings for me?
Workhorse: 3.5 stars 🌟
Wife days: 3 stars 🌟
The Heirloom: 3.5 stars
Inheritance: 4 stars 🌟
A Taste for Lionfish - 4 stars 🌟
Peaches, 1979 - 4 stars 🌟
Indigo Run: 3.5 stars 🌟
Night Hag: 2 stars 🌟
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Overall, a good collection of stories, had a few favorites and only one I thought was meh (that last one I thought could have done with being expanded upon more )
She's good at creating atmosphere and you feel like an observer as the characters go about their lives.
I felt removed from everything but also.. I guess invested or interested would be the right word?
Wouldn't read again but I had a good time reading everything..just wish I had more time to read these days.
December 12, 2021
I am amazed at each gem of a story. In each one, the author has delineated a fully-fleshed character with a complete backstory, motivations and emotional life. The writing is lovely, detailed, yet poetic. The characters are believable and fully alive.
April 18, 2022
Standout stories for me:
- "Peaches, 1979"
- "Inheritance"
- "Indigo Run"
- "Peaches, 1979"
- "Inheritance"
- "Indigo Run"
Read
May 2, 2022Bergman's stories never fail to amaze.
April 13, 2024
4.5 stars so I'll round it up to 5 on this measure.
So many different seasons of life and circumstances and life happening...
I periodically return to short stories to see if I still feel conflicted about them because usually I want to know more about the characters, and I still did here with some of the stories. This collection of short stories felt like an amuse bouche served every evening (if you read one story per day like I did), letting us know what this master can serve. I was glad and satisfied that the last story she shared was longer and in tune with ecology and history of the American South.
So many different seasons of life and circumstances and life happening...
I periodically return to short stories to see if I still feel conflicted about them because usually I want to know more about the characters, and I still did here with some of the stories. This collection of short stories felt like an amuse bouche served every evening (if you read one story per day like I did), letting us know what this master can serve. I was glad and satisfied that the last story she shared was longer and in tune with ecology and history of the American South.
September 21, 2023
evilness and womanhood, daughter and mother, nature and spirit. reading this felt like the power you get in the depths of grief and the memories of childhood you can only remember once told. loved loved loved
February 15, 2024
excellent character studies. parental and familial relationships, aging, womanhood, spirit, countryside settings, love and grief. standouts for me were definitely the novella (Indigo Run) and the short stories Wife Days and Peaches
December 11, 2022
4.5 My enjoyment of each story varied, but the writing was always sharp and satisfying.
May 20, 2024
haunting and creative wowwww (love middlebury professors doing amazing things)
July 8, 2022
Beautifully written. Stories about women, their lives, relationships, inner struggles of just being a woman. Mathew Bergman has a way of saying exactly what she means in such a beautiful way that… I reread so many parts of this book just to take it in again and again. And as you reread it each time, you garner more and more meaning from it.
July 3, 2022
This is the kind of book where I wouldn’t necessarily say I enjoyed reading it but I definitely felt very connected to it. The prose is beautiful, but what really stands out is the varieties of generation traumas that are expressed alongside the concept of physical inheritance.
This was a quick read- I finished it in two reading sessions today, and didn’t feel rushed, which is helped by the generally slow-feeling pace of the book as you move through the short stories and novella. I immediately handed it off to another woman who I thought would feel similarly connected to the concepts of inheritance passed through generations of women. Giving it a 4/5 because while it’s a beautiful book, I wouldn’t reread it for enjoyment and would not feel emotionally comfortable doing so.
Bought an advance copy of this book that somehow ended up at a used bookstore. Not sure why I picked it up, it’s very outside of my usual reading. Would recommend for a young woman feeling some extra generational trauma or general emotional turmoil that day.
This was a quick read- I finished it in two reading sessions today, and didn’t feel rushed, which is helped by the generally slow-feeling pace of the book as you move through the short stories and novella. I immediately handed it off to another woman who I thought would feel similarly connected to the concepts of inheritance passed through generations of women. Giving it a 4/5 because while it’s a beautiful book, I wouldn’t reread it for enjoyment and would not feel emotionally comfortable doing so.
Bought an advance copy of this book that somehow ended up at a used bookstore. Not sure why I picked it up, it’s very outside of my usual reading. Would recommend for a young woman feeling some extra generational trauma or general emotional turmoil that day.
October 13, 2021
I've been anticipating this book since 2016 when I learned Bergman was working on a novel. That excitement only grew after reading her first short story collection last fall and loving it. And while How Strange a Season wasn't entirely what I'd hoped for, it was great getting back into reading Bergman and seeing how her writing's changed in the last decade.
Some stories were stand-out, like "The Heirloom" and "Workhorse," while others didn't have as much momentum as I thought they could have. Most also felt tonally and thematically the same (which could be the point but made for a somewhat repetitive experience). Indigo Run took a little getting into but had so much potential, and I loved the writing of it, the complexities of the characters—I just think it would have been more successful as a full-fledged novel.
I received an ARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Some stories were stand-out, like "The Heirloom" and "Workhorse," while others didn't have as much momentum as I thought they could have. Most also felt tonally and thematically the same (which could be the point but made for a somewhat repetitive experience). Indigo Run took a little getting into but had so much potential, and I loved the writing of it, the complexities of the characters—I just think it would have been more successful as a full-fledged novel.
I received an ARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
April 26, 2022
"There were, of course, the things her mother taught her without using words -- that the darkness of life had teeth and learning how to fight it was more important than leaning how to write a thank-you note or press tablecloths."
I loved this collection so much -- stories about modern women, trying to survive on their own terms and make a difference in the world. That is, until I got to the last and longest of the collection, which I had a deep dislike for, for some reason. It also didn't seem to go with the rest. I wish she'd had other stories to round out this otherwise amazing collection and this probably would have been a 5 STAR book for me!
I loved this collection so much -- stories about modern women, trying to survive on their own terms and make a difference in the world. That is, until I got to the last and longest of the collection, which I had a deep dislike for, for some reason. It also didn't seem to go with the rest. I wish she'd had other stories to round out this otherwise amazing collection and this probably would have been a 5 STAR book for me!
March 29, 2022
Do you love stories of women breaking societal norms that are strong on the inside even if they’re not on the outside? This book of short stories does just that. They are real, heartbreaking and heart warming.
“The trick was to believe your choices. Once you let the doubt in, it ate you alive. Once you started trying to be good, you could only see the ways in which you weren’t.”
There were a lot of great, endearing moments in this book. Multiple short stories that brought tough women into the light. Their life struggles were unique but also easy to learn from.
A Taste of Lionfish and Ward was my favorite about a man trying to atone for the sins of his ancestors. It was honest and real and the one I connected to most. Ultimately, I’ve learned I’m not a fan of short stories. I don’t feel like the characters or story are developed enough and I’m left wanting more.
Thank you to Scribner Books for the gifted copy!
The book releases March 29, 2022.
https://www.theopenbooks.net/2022/03/...
“The trick was to believe your choices. Once you let the doubt in, it ate you alive. Once you started trying to be good, you could only see the ways in which you weren’t.”
There were a lot of great, endearing moments in this book. Multiple short stories that brought tough women into the light. Their life struggles were unique but also easy to learn from.
A Taste of Lionfish and Ward was my favorite about a man trying to atone for the sins of his ancestors. It was honest and real and the one I connected to most. Ultimately, I’ve learned I’m not a fan of short stories. I don’t feel like the characters or story are developed enough and I’m left wanting more.
Thank you to Scribner Books for the gifted copy!
The book releases March 29, 2022.
https://www.theopenbooks.net/2022/03/...
February 8, 2022
I’m currently reading this book and have been for a while. That’s why I’m reviewing it now. I’m a fast reader and I have 2 hours a day to read on a bus, so it’s telling when I manage to not read a book over the course of a month.
I somehow didn’t realize this is a collection of unrelated short stories, so I was confused at the first transition. The first story didn’t feel as though it resolved. I was ready for the next chapter, but it just ended and a new character with a completely new story took off on the next page.
After the second story “just ended”, however, my motivation to continue reading also just ended. The stories are fine, but I wouldn’t call them well developed. They don’t suck me in and piss me off that they ended (my meter for a great story). They also don’t bore me to the point I’ve thrown the book into a little free library before finishing. Nothing I read has been engaging enough to draw me back, though I do want to come back and read the South Carolina story I for some reason believed occupied the entire volume. So for now, it sits at a solid 3 stars.
I somehow didn’t realize this is a collection of unrelated short stories, so I was confused at the first transition. The first story didn’t feel as though it resolved. I was ready for the next chapter, but it just ended and a new character with a completely new story took off on the next page.
After the second story “just ended”, however, my motivation to continue reading also just ended. The stories are fine, but I wouldn’t call them well developed. They don’t suck me in and piss me off that they ended (my meter for a great story). They also don’t bore me to the point I’ve thrown the book into a little free library before finishing. Nothing I read has been engaging enough to draw me back, though I do want to come back and read the South Carolina story I for some reason believed occupied the entire volume. So for now, it sits at a solid 3 stars.
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January 3, 2022The novella towards the end of this book FUCKED ME UP. I KNOW that life. I’ve been waiting for a white woman to write about the horrors of the American south, and Megan Mayhew Bergman never disappoints. I wouldn’t say this is a book about grief, but that does feel like the pervasive feeling.
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