How to Get Along Without Me

by Kate Axelrod

How to Get Along Without Me is a collection that summons the perversity and poignance of twentysomething dating lives from a bracingly wry and honest new literary voice. In a world designed for couples, the protagonists of these interconnected stories have easy access to acquaintances with benefits but no paths to emotional intimacy. Casey is sleeping with two very differently wrong-for-her guys, but both named Josh and both allergic to her cat. In a post-breakup haze, Alix sees someone new though only for sex—and only on Wednesdays. And Lila actually has a good boyfriend, but she fantasizes about her ex and about an assistant principal at the school where they all teach. In scene after scene, Kate Axelrod bores into can’t-get-started-with-you trouble through stories that inhabit a Venn overlap of Kristen Roupenian’s “Cat Person” danger, Mary Gaitskill’s Bad Behavior erotic discontent, and Katherine Heiny’s Single, Carefree, Mellow heart. These character’s grasp at romantic connections and lose them, yet are given space by Axelrod to mourn and try again. Readers of How to Get Along Without Me get to enjoy the messiness of dating in one's late 20’s from the safe sidelines of this mesmerizing collection.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

190 pages, Paperback

Published April 16, 2024

About the author

Kate Axelrod was born and raised in New York City. She has a B.A. in Creative Writing from Oberlin College and a Masters in Social Work from Columbia University. She has written for Nerve.com, Salon and various other publications. She lives in Brooklyn and works as an advocate in the criminal justice system. This is her first novel.

Reviews

[jordy · Rating 4 out of 5]

compilation of short stories and shitty men honestly lol

[MeganLikesToRead · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was the worst book I think I have ever read… or at least since a book I was forced to read over 18 years ago by a high school. I thought I’d try a collection of short stories and tried it based on the back description and short blurbs on what others thought. Nothing made me laugh. I get their short stories but it felt very lacking in details. Like one short story has a conversation with a doctor and tells her she has an std but doesn’t name it and then gets it treated and finally says “warts.” The doctor couldn’t just say genital warts when she was diagnosed? When switching stories, certain stories it took a long time to define who “I” was… so the main character of the story didn’t really get an identity for a lot of their story. I wish I would have DNF’d this POS. But sadly I wasted my time hoping for something better. My personal opinion is that this book belongs in the garbage but I’ll return it to the library

[Paula Bomer · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I opened the book- beautiful book BTW by Clash, and interesting choice for them, this collection-I was taken by the very elaborate table of contents. Nice. So many short story collections have a few "hits" and then a lot of filler, with no thought to arrangements, to the opener and closer, to the movement of a collection as a book in itself. How to Get Along Without me is divided into 4 parts, separated as distinct entities simply by number, preceded by an intro called "Their Exes Exes". It consists of 7 summaries of the ex-lovers exes of the narrators, who narrate not in the inverse "I" version of second person, but in my reading in the true second person, the narrators addressing thier own exes. They are just brief summaries- titled by the men's names. They say a lot about the men, and plenty about the narrators and the exes. It's a brilliant way to start such a well thought out collection, where all the stories are placed where they are placed for a reason, a collection that isn't haphazardly thrown together with the kitchen sink to boot, but rather is a book that is a very cohesive, thought out narrative of what it means to be a young, privileged woman mostly in NYC, dealing with disappointing men, complicated female friendships, shitty entry level jobs and all the sorrow and loss and pain that life delivers to us.

Axelrod's narrators are deeply self-aware. As one narrator thinks, perfectly placed toward the end of the collection; "She hates the inclination she has to constantly narrate her life to someone." And yet it is this inclination that makes a writer. And so it is, that we have a real writer here.

There is plenty of humor - shitty men are ridiculous, and the details of their WTF behavior is great fun. The awful bosses are just so cluelessly awful in so many ways - "grab me some kombucha?" (I once had to go buy my boss suppositories, the 90s version of kombucha) -that it might be my favorite part of this book as a breather from the endless relationship and family trouble. Most importantly, while the pains of how young women grow up are repetitive, this is so because it is true, that there is an endless supply of disappointment in life, usually in the form of men, and the details matter. And the details are good. No one figures things out right away. No one can control that narrative, as hard as we try, because we can't predict what the people around us are going to do. What we can do, and what Axelrod does, is acknowledge how life entails suffering and loss, and for the heterosexual woman, crap men, and show us how, even why, that is so, despite and alongside all the beauty and hope that makes it worth living.

[Trish · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of delightful, funny, relatable and heartfelt short stories. I devoured this book.

"she wished that everyone could be as kind and thoughtful as to prepare people for their absences, for the gaping hole that they would leave behind. How nice it would be, if every time you lost someone, they left a manual in their wake. How to Get Along Without Me, it would say. It would be filled with tender and pragmatic advice from the old lover, the former best friend, the incisive grandmother. It would brace you for the future, how to manage your solitude, how to fill up all those long, empty spaces without them."

"she was constantly, accidentally revealing herself to people. She didn't mean to but the words seemed to spill out of her, like some layer of armor was weathered or missing. She could spend an hour with someone and they would leave knowing about the first time she’d had sex, or that year in high school where she was bulimic"

"...she stops, deletes. She hates the inclination she has to constantly narrate her life to someone"

[David M · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sharp, stylish, wry and moving. Someone should make this TV series.

[Heloisa Tomaz de Aquino · Rating 5 out of 5]

Funny, light, and heartwarming read - I liked all the essays and it was easy to relate to the stories.

[Marianne Villanueva · Rating 4 out of 5]

The stories are so good, but the story titles are terrible: too precious by half. "Death is a Law School Graduate"? Hello?

I love the stories. Story # 2 had me laughing almost all the way through. A woman sleeps with two guys who improbably have the same name and who are also both allergic to her cat. The one she likes less is the one who seems to like her more (of course) so she keeps putting her cat on the bed hoping it will trigger an allergy attack. But he shows her his tablet of Claritin and, just to show her what a nice, tolerant guy he is, takes one in front of her. LOL LOL LOL

I don't know if the stories are all about the same character, but a woman dating two guys with the same name pops up again, later in the collection. In one story, the shared name is "Josh", in another it's xxxxx.

Another surprise: Two different boyfriends in two different stories use the same line: THE STRUGGLE IS REAL. Are these linked stories? Are the boyfriends (even though they have different names) all iterations of the same person? I guess they are, but it's super-distracting.

There is a line on p. 49 about two terriers (this author is obssessed with double-ness) that you have to read to believe.

The men in these stories are mostly awful. (Why am I laughing? Because the author is hilarious) There is one who she thinks might be her boyfriend who keeps asking her to scratch her back. He doesn't want to have sex with her, he only wants her to scratch his back. AND TO KEEP SCRATCHING HIS BACK.

And then the boyfriend with the feet so smelly that every time he removes his socks, she almost gags.

Finished reading today. I enjoyed EVERY SINGLE STORY, I don't think I've said that in a long, long time. Massive kudos, Kate Axelrod.