What a clever idea to amass an anthology of these various "wine reads." Here is a collection for true wine connoisseurs and novices alike, because eacWhat a clever idea to amass an anthology of these various "wine reads." Here is a collection for true wine connoisseurs and novices alike, because each selection not only highlights the wine itself - so the reader gets mini wine lessons - but highlights the lives that we live around the wine pastimes we love. An excellent gift idea for wine lovers and readers both!
I’m relieved to have aged out of that sense that my primary obligation is to be pretty, relieved to work at a job that allows me to feel useful. Did II’m relieved to have aged out of that sense that my primary obligation is to be pretty, relieved to work at a job that allows me to feel useful. Did I used to think being pretty was my primary obligation because I was in some way delusional? Or was it that I’d absorbed the messages I was meant to absorb with the same diligence with which I’d studied?
Curtis Sittenfeld’s You Think It, I’ll Say It, is a collection for the grown woman, for the woman who still thinks back on her “youth” and college years with fondness but also with a sense of wonder – is that who I was? Is this who I have become?
This is a smart collection—one that explores the natural irony in our everyday lives. There’s a lot of wistful nostalgia and contemplation in this collection on the feat—the very fact and act—of being pretty: what it means to be “pretty” and how that affects us as adult women.
“I once heard that smart women want to be told they’re pretty and pretty women want to be told they’re smart. And the most depressing part is that I think I agree.”
An upper middle-class woman ponders the boredom and mundane quality of her routine life, only to seek out a thrill that may or may not have already been there from the start (“The World Has Many Butterflies”).
A college student at her dad’s Alma Mater who’s idolized the school for most of her life also starts to idolize one of her college friends—only to find that the friend is just an average, flawed individual like everybody else (“Vox Clamantis in Deserto”).
A young political intern with OCD snaps while volunteering at a shelter for poor urban families (“Volunteers Are Shining Stars”).
And a woman contemplates her near-hate-like jealousy for the reality lifestyle star who was her first lesbian experience way back when (“The Prairie Wife”).
Here would be a great place to say that “Plausible Deniability,” “Off the Record” and “A Regular Couple” were my other favorites. I wasn’t particularly fond of “Gender Studies,” in which a woman misplaces her license and ends up having a sexual encounter with the taxi driver she believes has found the license. I first read this one in The New Yorker in the fall of 2016. There were speculations and allusions from other bloggers that maybe Sittenfeld was offering political commentary on a nation’s identity lost! (I say in my dramatic voice) due to the (imminent) election of Trump, but I didn’t see it. I just took that story at face value and it wasn’t bad but it wasn’t a favorite either.
These are just a few of the narratives you’ll find here in this 10-story collection. There were so many times that a story would start and I’d fear it was going down the route of “Everyday Yuppie,” and I cringed. BUT, EVERY time, Sittenfeld pulled the story back from the brink with a twist of irony and humor. After the third or fourth story, I just relaxed into the read and went with it, knowing that the place I’d end up in the end wasn’t where I thought I was going in the beginning. I know I’m not alone when I say that I LOVE being able to trust an author, to trust a narrator, like that. It allows for a phenomenally smooth read and for the reader to have time to become one with the characters, no matter how short the stories are.
This collection ran a gamut of stories that wasn’t necessarily wide but did manage to convey a delightful spectrum of sentiments, emotions and lessons. “Bad Latch” was by far one of my favorite stories, hilariously Yuppie and otherworldly—these sheltered, middle-class moms who spend their days at infant swimming lessons and pregnancy yoga—then the story morphed into something so much more special and resonating:
“It wasn’t that I looked down on parents who put their kids in daycare, it wasn’t that I disapproved of them, or at least if I did disapprove, I knew enough to be embarrassed by my disapproval…Nevertheless, on Sadie’s first day at Green Valley Children’s Center, I didn’t even make it out the front door before I burst into tears. I hadn’t felt that bad about some of the things that women having babies when I did…were supposed to feel bad about—an epidural, formula—but the collapse of my carefully crafted childcare setup seemed like a failure of a different magnitude."
In You Think It, I’ll Say It, Curtis Sittenfeld’s distinctive writing style is in full form. It’s casual and conversational, witty and makes for an easy, entertaining read. I also gave her a strong 4 stars for her novel Eligible for this same reason. I blew through about 60% of this collection in one sitting, so well did it flow and move me along with the characters and their ironic contemplative situations. Not only that, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that Sittenfeld is a true master of showing her reader rather than telling her reader. I got to know so much about her characters simply by watching them in their everyday lives, and she, as the writer, trusted her reader enough to let us figure out what she was trying to say. Each story is set in a different city (all either during or referencing the 1990s) which I thought was a FANTASTIC device, creating a kind of survey of American—well, upperish middle class white American—life. That survey aspect was a real gem, because each story in this collection set up a different dilemma rooted in the same basic question—the question of Who am I, how did I get here, and am I okay with it? None of these stories takes an overly grandiose view of life. No one is living in a sci fi fantasy world of improbable circumstances and star ships. These stories all happen right here on Earth, literally, of course, but more importantly, figuratively. And for me, that’s always a breath of fresh air. A strong 4 stars ****
Short stories hold a power that longer works of fiction do not have the advantage of: they can pack a hard punch that'll knock your socks off in mere Short stories hold a power that longer works of fiction do not have the advantage of: they can pack a hard punch that'll knock your socks off in mere minutes, spilling uplifting joy, heart-wrenching pain or newly provoked thought from readers all in one fell swoop. This, of course, is because they are so much more concentrated than their longer counterparts, doing away with excess prose and condensing the narrative arc into a matter of pages rather than chapters. For this reason, some of my favorite reads—the most thought-provoking and resonating reads—of all time have been short stories, and I sought this out here, within this collection, to continue that tradition for me. However, In Sunlight or in Shadow seemed prepared to offer up nothing but the latter, with the few glimmers of entertainment here so weak and sporadic that it was like the sun never quite pushed through the blinds.
Story after story were mind-numbingly dull and unmemorable. In reading through this anthology centered around the paintings of Edward Hopper (also featured within these pages before the start of each story written around them), I often felt like I was trudging through thick mud in search of that jewel that would glimmer brightly from beneath the sludge. It took me longer to finish this than it should have—than it could have—because I didn’t really want to pick it back up. But, alas, that is the magic with short story collections, isn’t it? You always feel that just around the next corner, with the next turn of the page, the next story might be the one. The next story might be enough to carry the entire collection—and so, you read on. But I never found anything magical in this compilation.
To be fair, Stephen King and Nicholas Christopher lightly touched on a literary nerve, and had this collection been filled with stories such as those, In Sunlight or in Shadow would’ve earned itself a far stronger rating from me indeed. But nothing truly moved or inspired me here. In truth, most of these stories took themselves far too seriously, as if the author’s identity or the mere fact that they’d proffered literary prose (rather than commercial plot lines) would alone carry the read, make me love it, make me keep turning pages. Well, Block, it wasn’t enough! Not by a long shot. I found most of these stories to be tedious and stuffy at best. No doubt, some teacher will find this collection and force it upon her high school English students, because it seems to exude the literary seriousness—gravitas, shall we say—requisite to be considered great. And no doubt the students will likely feel as I did.
My life has not been changed in reading this. Neither has my mind been stretched nor my imagination tested, my joy for reading stoked or my heart rate even quickened. In fact, the only thing that changed in reading this collection was my willingness to ever pick up anything else that Lawrence Block has ever laid a finger on. Will I dare? We shall see.
This collection has managed to earn the first 1.5 star review I’ve ever given—I could barely finish it, but somehow Stephen King’s “The Music Room” and Nicholas Christopher’s “Rooms by the Sea” saved it from complete engulfment by the yawning abyss. I have nothing else to even say about this collection, except that I need a good palette cleanser to start anew on something else. *
* I received an advance-read copy of this book from the publisher, Pegasus Books, via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
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