Not a Thing to Comfort You

by Emily Wortman-Wunder

From a lightning death on an isolated peak to the intrigues of a small town orchestra, the glimmering stories in this debut collection explore how nature—damaged, fierce, and unpredictable—worms its way into our lives. Here moths steal babies, a creek seduces a lonely suburban mother, and the priorities of a passionate conservationist are thrown into confusion after the death of her son. Over and over, the natural world reveals itself to be unknowable, especially to the people who study it most. These tales of scientists, nurses, and firefighters catalog the loneliness within families, betrayals between friends, and the recurring song of regret and grief.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

148 pages, Paperback

Published October 15, 2019

Reviews

[Susanna]

This is a beautiful collection of short stories that I gobbled up in just a couple of sittings, despite the fact that I don't normally plow quickly through short stories. Wortman-Wunder has a rare gift of being able to pin down a setting and a situation--often a brutally uncomfortable one--with precision and seeming objectivity, while also making the reader care deeply about the characters. Most of these stories focus on strong women as they mature in a moment through the events of the story. They don't shy away from revealing the parts of our own nature that might make us squirm. These pieces will linger with me.

[Jennifer]

Rich in place and psychological insight, Not a Thing to Comfort You features characters dazzled and deranged by nature and their own deepest yearnings. Wortman-Wunder herself is a force of nature in this powerful debut.

(Disclaimer: despite our shared last name, Emily Wortman-Wunder and I are not related!)

[Jen Tidman]

This is an incredible collection of short stories that span many genres, topics and styles. Wortman-Wunder⁠ is so deft and flexible that it's almost hard to believe they're all written by the same author, rather than being an anthology. Nonetheless, there are some overarching themes: regret, grief, the power of nature, the loneliness within families, and betrayals between friends. I definitely felt shades of Angela Carter and Ali Smith and will be looking out for more by Wortman-Wunder.

[Susan Eubank]

Here are the questions discussed at the Reading the Western Landscape Community Book Discussion on December 11, 2024.


Icebreaker: Tell about a time you were in nature that you enjoyed or one you didn't enjoy.

General questions:

Which was the best story? Why?

What do you think about the order of the stories in the book? Why?

What did you think about the settings of the stories?

What did you think, generally, about all her protagonists?

What is the author trying to get at, generally, in her stories?

Favorite line, image or passage?



Questions about individual stories in order in the book:

1)What did you understand about the first story, generally?

2)How did Bluff, Nebraska fit in here?

3)Did this happen to the author? Why? Why not? The book is called "stories." Does that make it fiction? Why? Why?

4)What makes the story seem so real or if not what makes it seem like it is made up?

5)Why did she tell this story? Does it make the others feel less or more real? Why? Why not?

6)Does this one work? Why? Why not?

7)What did you think of the two main characters?

8)What did the mom do? Why? What kind of parenting is this? Or mental illness? Why does it end that way?

9)Did the talking about a "lesson" work? Why? Why not?

10)What did you think of the last line?

11)Is this a successful story? Why? Why not?

[Erin Shaw]

Wow. This writing is incredible. I love each of these stories for very different reasons, but I love the collection for how well it writes longing in each of the women. Longing for connection, longing to be seen and understood and desired, longing for a life set on our own terms. And that this longing all stems from compromises (and maybe regrets?) these women made in their lives is both terrifying and powerful. I don’t know what it means to “have it all” or if this was some GirlBoss fiction sold to me in the name of feminism, but I would really love to have conversations with these women and see what they have to say.

[Edna Pontellier]

Dark, surprising, psychologically complex stories about women's relationships with the natural world and each other. I loved the occasional touches of magical realism that illuminated these otherwise stark, confrontational stories, and I admired Wortman-Wunder's impressive range of subjects, tones, and points of view. As the title promises, these are challenging stories that may not comfort you but will leave you thinking about their characters and worlds long after you've finished reading. Overall: rich, productively unsettling stories populated by morally complicated characters and vivid Western and Midwestern landscapes.

[Edward Hamlin]

Superbly original stories with crisp narrative voices that pull us in from the very first sentence. These stories flex in many directions stylistically - each is really sui generis. There are some common threads, like Colorado, and the natural world as experienced by naturalists, but really they're all quite distinct.

Some people like collections to cohere around a single POV or voice, but I personally prefer this approach, in which each story is its own universe. Highly recommended.

[Kristen Arendt]

I greatly enjoyed this collection. Wortman-Wunder weaves beautiful complexity and striking dissonance into these stories in a way that is visceral while grounding her characters and settings in the recognizably every day.

[Cassie]

I really liked this collection—especially for its ecological bent and the women who seem very real, and torn between worlds and options.

[Gracemary Allen]

pure ennui devoured in a sitting