Review: You Think It, I'll Say It: Stories

by Curtis Sittenfeld (Random House, 2018; Paperback, March 2019)

This often-hilarious collection of short stories set in contemporary America deploys an array of vivid 30-40-something female protagonists. The characters act out varieties of reckless choices and come to grips with layered versions of self as they make their mark on the world. Absolutely entertaining women’s fiction with one lens tuned to images of daily life during the T*$mp era and another lens focused on the inner lives of flawed, often snarky, and always complex characters. Endings of these stories offer futures merely glimpsed, never tied neatly into predictable outcomes. We find modern varieties of the family unit, wife-as-breadwinner reckonings, social media’s destructive power, celebrity envy, flirting (and some acted-out) sexual fantasy, plenty of “road-not-taken” angst, and clever dialogue on every page. Cinematic, would be entertaining on film! Curtis Sittenfeld is a New York Times bestselling novelist, author of Sisterhood, Prep, American Wife, and Eligible. Coming to paperback in March 2019.