Like Human

by Janet Goldberg

A suburban teenage girl, needy for love, wakes up one morning to find that a secret admirer has left something on her windshield. An adult daughter, trying to cure her father’s MS, flies into Florida with a secret stash of bees, hoping to sting her father into remission; A woman, hiking with her husband on an isolated trail in Death Valley, encounters another hiker, a lone man who seems to want more than company. Janet Goldberg’s mesmeric stories pit people against their loved ones, their landscapes, the fluid boundaries of safety, and ultimately, the vagaries of love.

194 pages, Paperback

Published October 14, 2025

Reviews

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

The female protagonists in Like Human are often at odds with men, with nature, with others’ expectations, and ultimately with themselves. There are pregnancies, but no babies, and the animals (predators, curious ducks, or dogs simply seeking marital bliss) share the stage with the humans, who are in turmoil and often unable to connect. I’ve loved reading Janet Goldberg’s stories for years: “The Prank,” “Goldfish & Women,” “Rock, River, Salmon, Sky,” and “Every Small Thing” are among my favorites—stories rich with compact, poetic descriptions and themes that transform magically into plots. “Back to Eve,” the closing story of Like Human, is no exception to her unique artistry. From the opening lines, “She’d been built for better things. Surely the mannequins, sentenced to eternal duty at the scalloped rim of the department, would think the same thing if they were only human,” Janet Goldberg takes her readers onto a revelatory tour of the human condition and quest.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

An intimate, exquisitely observed collection of stories of girls and women negotiating an uncertain world. The complexities of a five-year marriage are quietly slipped between a man and his wife on her first camping trip. There is a possible bear. In another husband and wife flee from an unidentified stranger on the mountain hiking trail, and still another story finds a wary young woman applying for a job in a remote school that becomes more and more frightening. Several times while reading the book, I almost whispered, “Stop! Don’t go there.” And yet the daylight shines and all is quite ordinary again except for something lurking just between the sentences. Most of the relationships within Janet Goldberg’s masterful LIKE HUMAN are between a girl or woman and a man: father, stalker, stranger, inept friend or perhaps everyday husband in the uncharted landscape of marriage. Mesmerizing.

[Michael Gray]

I really enjoyed all these wonderful stories and their nuanced sense of place – the awareness of how America’s inane consumer and status-driven culture and real estate are an inextricably linked landscape. A perfect setting for an even trickier landscape – love and relationships. Bravo, Janet!

--Michael Loyd Gray
Author of the novellas Busted Flat, Night Hawks, and the forthcoming story collection The Space Between Now and Then.

[Candi Sary · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was so lucky to read LIKE HUMAN before it was released, and the wonderful stories have really stayed with me. I loved the book! And would love to share the blurb I wrote for it:

"With beautiful, evocative writing, Goldberg pulls readers into the wonders and perils of the natural world, while brilliantly capturing the complexity of the humans who roam it.”

[John Hughes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Janet Goldberg’s story collection, Like Human, is a wonderful book. It is beautifully written and oh so timely. The women in these stories inhabit a world of danger and disappointment, and the situations they find themselves in and the men they struggle with are ones we all recognize. Do yourself a favor and get this book. You won’t be sorry.

[M.J. White · Rating 5 out of 5]

 The reader is struck again and again, not by the darkness of these compulsively readable stories but by how often even the smallest light can illuminate all.