Welcome to Litsy!

Kevin Wilson writes quirky novels that I usually love in their strangeness. This book of short stories gives you little bites of that, each one showing a character doing their best to struggle through a challenging life event.

I only rate it so-so because I‘m not a short story fan. It‘s a good collection, I just prefer novels.

Isn‘t this cover weird and wonderful? It fits one of the stories.

#doublespin

Absolutely loved! I always appreciate a collection of stories. I flew through this book so fast and didn‘t want it to end.

Look what I found today, @Centique , and right after your glowing review! I also found another Beryl Bainbridge, @Cathythoughts . 👏

Just doing my best to support my local secondhand bookshop on #IndependentBookstoreDay , of course. 😉

Had I owned this book and slowly read one story at a time, maybe even doubling back on a couple of them, I would highly recommend this. Curtis writes interesting women with life and experience here. The loaned audiobook is great, but it‘s hard for me to recall short stories when experienced this way. The moment was good though!

I‘m kicking myself because i had almost finished this book and then the library insisted i bring it back 😂 But it was probably the best collection of short stories I‘ve ever read! That is - if you like authors like Barbara Pym, Anita Brookner, maybe Penelope Lively. These are frequently bittersweet stories where the main character is a woman, often an older woman, and they focus on love and grief and ageing and mistakes and chances lost and ⬇️

I feel too much I think. I'm easily shamed; easily hurt. So I go nuclear quickly in confrontations. I do know better. I'm learning not to resist; to let it go. William Trevor is my soundtrack. He sees the things that move me. He sounds like my own thoughts. Although his plots can be unnerving, his understanding of his characters is comforting. There won't be a happy ending, but there will be an ending. And I will understand.

I used to really like Curtis Sittenfeld. I thought her first two books were amazing, Prep and Rodham. But ever since then…meh. I dutifully start each one but then disappointment sets in. This is a short story collection. Read the first three, didn‘t get any of them, bailed. Maybe they‘ll speak to someone else, but it wasn‘t me.

I had to take this collection back to the library before I got through it, but I read enough of these stories to know that I must read more Mavis Gallant short stories! I can‘t believe I haven‘t before now. They are brilliant.

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My #ThorsDayRec this week is a 700 page collection that I finished at the end of January this year after starting it the beginning of Dec last year. There are numerous memorable stories collected in this retrospective, the title story itself is one of the greatest pieces of American 20th C noir fiction. When JC Oates is on point, she is right up there with Shirley Jackson & Patricia Highsmith IMO. Absolutely fantastic.