I love short story anthologies.

A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an e-ARC via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.

Katherine Heiny writes brilliantly about the absurdity of life in the everyday. This book is a collection of 11 short stories about driving instructors, women helping their husband’s ex-wife and being snowed in at an airport. They are wonderful stories that could each make a novel, so I was sad to leave each group of characters after such a short time.

Each story is funny, sad and loaded with memorable, quirky characters. Each character is fully realised from their quirks to their speech, which isn’t easy in so few pages nor when multiple characters are involved. I love how Heiny finds the absurd, amusing and downright weird in everything. It’s refreshing and relatable. The first story, Chicken-Flavored and Lemon Scented, is a little more devoid of humour and surprising than some of the other stories. It wasn’t one of my favourites, but there are gems along the way. Bridesmaid, Revisited involves a woman wearing a terrifically ugly bridesmaid dress for a day – from the New York subway and to work at a copier company. The story of the dress and the wedding is fascinating for being a bit mean and a bit voyeuristic. Like the rest of the stories in this collection, they give an insight into people’s lives behind closed doors, warts and all. There is the mother who is worried that her son is doing drugs – because he looks happy, for goodness’ sake – but ends up doing lines with her ex-husband on his office desk. A man is worried that his wife is about to tidy him out of her life after reading Marie Kondo and another avoids her ex-husband by getting drunk with strangers in an airport. A woman’s father eats an expensive hearing aid.

Each character is messy, petty and easily relatable even if you’ve never been in the same situation. It’s light-hearted, although there are several explorations of infidelity and its outcomes (like being forced to move things outdoors in the freezing weather). Heiny writes each scenario with a lot of detail, humour and love for each character, flawed as they may be. She is easily one of the best short story writers out there today.

http://samstillreading.wordpress.com ( )

Exceptional,very funny and extremely endearing collection of short fiction. I was sorry the book can
Me to it’s end. I could listen to Katherine Heiney’s incredible narrators all day. Wonderful! ( )

A most delightful story collection to shine a light of humor and grace in fraught times. It’s impossible to choose a favorite from tales of DMV examiners, impossible elderly parents, and egocentric adulterers, but I guess I’d pick the one where a young woman, for no discernible reason, wears a bridesmaid’s gown to work. Totally delightful, highly recommended, filled with odd decisions made by people who should know better. ( )

Intelligent. Sly. Poignant.

I couldn't read this collection in one day because each story demanded thought and reflection. Standouts were the story of the woman whose father ate his $4000 hearing aid mistaking it for a cashew, and the story of a man who is afraid his Marie Kondo-ing wife shall find that he sparks no joy and discard him. Katherine Heiny's stories show the nuance in human life and interactions--the things we can and cannot say to each other--with wit and poignancy.

I made a Goodreads pledge to read 194 books this year LOL and this is the first story collection I've read this year! Follow me to see my other reviews. ( )