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Someone's Uncle: A Story
Alison Espach, acclaimed author of The Adults , brings her razor sharp insight and storytelling magic to bear in this entrancing tale.
- GenresShort Stories
22 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 27, 2011
110 people are currently reading
320 people want to read
About the author
Alison Espach
9 books5,819 followersAlison Espach grew up in Trumbull, Connecticut, where she lived for most of her life. She earned her BA from Providence College and her Masters in Creative Writing from Washington University in St. Louis. Her writing has appeared in McSweeney's, Five Chapters, Glamour, Salon, The Daily Beast, Writer's Digest, and other journals.
She is currently teaching in New York City.
She is currently teaching in New York City.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
March 22, 2025
2.5⭐️ ugh why did i read this
July 25, 2025
I love the books I’ve read by Alison Espach, but this was icky. The only good thing about it was that it was short.
November 21, 2025
I’m going to pretend I didn’t read this.
June 8, 2025
It was good! It was a very short story but I needed just a little more to understand why she’s feeling and doing what’s she’s doing.
June 15, 2025
‘This is my problem. When I don’t hate someone as much as I thought I did, I assume I love them. When someone is not as horrible as I have decided they are, I feel like I need them, but I shouldn’t.’
January 9, 2026
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Someone’s Uncle by Alison Espach is short, memorable, unsettling—and quietly devastating.
This has quickly become my favorite author after engolfing most of all of her work, last year! Her voice is sharp, observant, darkly funny, and capable of doing a remarkable amount of emotional work in just a few pages.
Told in the first person, Someone’s Uncle pulls us directly into the mind of its unnamed protagonist as she exposes her growing dissatisfaction, insecurity, and emotional drift. Espach’s prose is deceptively simple—every sentence feels carefully placed, every word intentional. The narrator’s voice feels like that of an old friend you haven’t seen in years: familiar, wry, self-aware, and just a little more jaded. Espach’s signature deadpan humor softens the edges of the story even as it quietly sharpens the knife.
What this story unfolds is amusing, uncomfortable, and increasingly sad, balancing humor with a creeping sense of inevitability. Espach has an uncanny ability to make the reader complicit, pulling us along even when we sense where things may be headed.
The ending, for me, was difficult—and intentionally so. I could feel the story moving toward it, like watching a slow-motion collision you can’t stop. I expected to feel anger or indignation, but instead I was left with something quieter and more unsettling: sadness. Sadness for the protagonist, for her choices, and for her participation in the emotional disconnection that defines so much of modern life. Her attempt to resist that emptiness feels both futile and painfully human.
Along the way, Espach delivers moments of striking, poetic clarity: “a sadness creeping up my legs like fungus” and “that is what we become up here. A handful of stones scooped up together in the palm, for just a moment.” These lines linger. There’s also sharp, funny insight into the circular, sometimes absurd dynamics between men and women—smart, uncomfortable, and undeniably compelling.
She creates an entire emotional landscape in just a handful of pages, proving how powerful restraint can be. Someone’s Uncle is unsettling, intelligent, and emotionally resonant—fiction that leaves you slightly off-balance, exactly as it should.
Disturbing? Yes, for some readers—especially if you have strong feelings about creepy uncles, morally questionable encounters, or intimacy unfolding in ancient European spaces. But that discomfort is part of the point. Espach isn’t interested in easy answers; she’s interested in experience.
“A good author makes you think. A great one makes you feel.” Alison Espach does both!!
Ultimately, Someone’s Uncle is a brief, but potent reminder of Espach’s talent. It’s worth reading—and rereading—for its voice, its insight, and the quiet ache it leaves behind.
Someone’s Uncle by Alison Espach is short, memorable, unsettling—and quietly devastating.
This has quickly become my favorite author after engolfing most of all of her work, last year! Her voice is sharp, observant, darkly funny, and capable of doing a remarkable amount of emotional work in just a few pages.
Told in the first person, Someone’s Uncle pulls us directly into the mind of its unnamed protagonist as she exposes her growing dissatisfaction, insecurity, and emotional drift. Espach’s prose is deceptively simple—every sentence feels carefully placed, every word intentional. The narrator’s voice feels like that of an old friend you haven’t seen in years: familiar, wry, self-aware, and just a little more jaded. Espach’s signature deadpan humor softens the edges of the story even as it quietly sharpens the knife.
What this story unfolds is amusing, uncomfortable, and increasingly sad, balancing humor with a creeping sense of inevitability. Espach has an uncanny ability to make the reader complicit, pulling us along even when we sense where things may be headed.
The ending, for me, was difficult—and intentionally so. I could feel the story moving toward it, like watching a slow-motion collision you can’t stop. I expected to feel anger or indignation, but instead I was left with something quieter and more unsettling: sadness. Sadness for the protagonist, for her choices, and for her participation in the emotional disconnection that defines so much of modern life. Her attempt to resist that emptiness feels both futile and painfully human.
Along the way, Espach delivers moments of striking, poetic clarity: “a sadness creeping up my legs like fungus” and “that is what we become up here. A handful of stones scooped up together in the palm, for just a moment.” These lines linger. There’s also sharp, funny insight into the circular, sometimes absurd dynamics between men and women—smart, uncomfortable, and undeniably compelling.
She creates an entire emotional landscape in just a handful of pages, proving how powerful restraint can be. Someone’s Uncle is unsettling, intelligent, and emotionally resonant—fiction that leaves you slightly off-balance, exactly as it should.
Disturbing? Yes, for some readers—especially if you have strong feelings about creepy uncles, morally questionable encounters, or intimacy unfolding in ancient European spaces. But that discomfort is part of the point. Espach isn’t interested in easy answers; she’s interested in experience.
“A good author makes you think. A great one makes you feel.” Alison Espach does both!!
Ultimately, Someone’s Uncle is a brief, but potent reminder of Espach’s talent. It’s worth reading—and rereading—for its voice, its insight, and the quiet ache it leaves behind.
August 13, 2025
I enjoyed her other books but don’t waste your time on this one.
Typically there is a beginning a middle and an end in a book, but you will not find that here. It seemed extremely short the prologue had nothing to do with the one chapter book.
Typically there is a beginning a middle and an end in a book, but you will not find that here. It seemed extremely short the prologue had nothing to do with the one chapter book.
April 29, 2024
Not as good as her other stuff
January 26, 2025
That was kind of creepy. Not "entrancing," as described in the introduction; just an old guy getting off in a stairwell. I wish I hadn't read that.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 2, 2025
A short read, felt like someone was narrating a story to me.
December 20, 2025
This was something alright...I really love her writing. But this story wasn't it. The creepy, icky uncle...the random Hitler references...just no.
June 7, 2025
Unsettling short story about a young American's tourist's erotic encounter with her friend's uncle on a European visit. Probably "disturbing," if you have very strong feelings about sex with slightly creepy uncles. Or sex in the belfries of medieval cathedrals. Or if you have strong feelings about lines like this ...
"There are tricks," he says, "to getting American wood to taste like French."
Ahem ... That's the last line of paragraph one: don't say you weren't warned.
I enjoyed Espach's 2024 novel The Wedding People which, I felt, found the dark humour in the meet-cute of two unhappy young women, one whose life is collapsing around her, and plans to kill herself, the other who is wrangling her dream wedding -- perfect, except for the minor point that she's marrying the wrong man. In The Wedding People, Espach was sometimes heart-breaking, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, she made excellent use of the weary tropes of romance novels, and I wanted to read more from her.
She knows how to get a laugh.
“There’s really no elevator?” I say.
“It was built in the thirteenth century, dear...”
She is, I think, playing with the themes of Lolita: decadent Europe (all 13th Century belfries and casual nude sunbathing) meets crass, young America. (At least the unnamed narrator here is 30-something. I have never been able to get more than a couple dozen pages into Lolita. Yes, I know Humbert Humber's obsession is a metaphor. But I can't get past the fact that the metaphor is a 12-year-old child.)
Unnamed Narrator is no victim, and we get all this from her perspective, however baffling that perspective is. (I can feel my body shape to his, or his body shape to mine, and doesn't this make you angry, Uncle Jack?) And Espach's central metaphor is .... refreshingly obvious: "Because here I am, headed toward the tip of the largest cathedral in Germany ... "
My problem, in spite of the wit, and in spite of creepy Uncle Jack and the belfry, is that perhaps Espach explains too much: she lards issues on her Unnamed Narrator (unhappy marriage, death of her father, childlessness which may or may not be a choice). Unnamed Narrator may not be a victim, but neither does she seem to have much agency, and it's impossible to think that a quickie in the belfry of Cologne cathedral, with her friend's creepy uncle changes anything.
"There are tricks," he says, "to getting American wood to taste like French."
Ahem ... That's the last line of paragraph one: don't say you weren't warned.
I enjoyed Espach's 2024 novel The Wedding People which, I felt, found the dark humour in the meet-cute of two unhappy young women, one whose life is collapsing around her, and plans to kill herself, the other who is wrangling her dream wedding -- perfect, except for the minor point that she's marrying the wrong man. In The Wedding People, Espach was sometimes heart-breaking, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, she made excellent use of the weary tropes of romance novels, and I wanted to read more from her.
She knows how to get a laugh.
“There’s really no elevator?” I say.
“It was built in the thirteenth century, dear...”
She is, I think, playing with the themes of Lolita: decadent Europe (all 13th Century belfries and casual nude sunbathing) meets crass, young America. (At least the unnamed narrator here is 30-something. I have never been able to get more than a couple dozen pages into Lolita. Yes, I know Humbert Humber's obsession is a metaphor. But I can't get past the fact that the metaphor is a 12-year-old child.)
Unnamed Narrator is no victim, and we get all this from her perspective, however baffling that perspective is. (I can feel my body shape to his, or his body shape to mine, and doesn't this make you angry, Uncle Jack?) And Espach's central metaphor is .... refreshingly obvious: "Because here I am, headed toward the tip of the largest cathedral in Germany ... "
My problem, in spite of the wit, and in spite of creepy Uncle Jack and the belfry, is that perhaps Espach explains too much: she lards issues on her Unnamed Narrator (unhappy marriage, death of her father, childlessness which may or may not be a choice). Unnamed Narrator may not be a victim, but neither does she seem to have much agency, and it's impossible to think that a quickie in the belfry of Cologne cathedral, with her friend's creepy uncle changes anything.
January 31, 2017
I'm a big fan of Alison as I read 'The Adults" prior to reading this book. So when I found this book on iTunes I had to get it. I didn't want this book to end as I felt like it wasn't long enough. I hope Alison's to read more from Alison as she is an incredible writer
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews