Do the Windows Open?

by Julie Hecht

Do the Windows Open? is a series of hilarious linked tales documenting the mania of the modern day in devastating detail — tales that have had readers of The New Yorker laughing out loud for years.

The beguiling and alienated narrator — who finds nearly everything interesting and almost nothing clear — has set herself the never-ending goal of photographing a world-renowned reproductive surgeon, Walden Pond, the ponds of Nantucket, and all the houses Anne Sexton ever lived in.

On the way, she searches for organically grown vegetables, windows that open, and an endodontist who acts like a normal person. She sometimes compares herself unfavorably to Jacqueline Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, and Princess Diana.

What emerges is a unique sensibility under siege. This is a remarkably original literary performance, one that speaks to anyone looking for the refuge laughter offers from life in an absurd world.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Humor, Essays, Adult, Anthologies, Novels

213 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Julie Hecht is a contemporary American fiction writer specializing in interlacing short stories. She is best known for her book "Do the Windows Open?," a series of short stories some of which first appeared independently in The New Yorker.

Reviews

[Katie · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's rare for me to find a book I absolutely dislike. If you're up for 200 pages of luxurious ramblings from a New Yorker set pre-9/11, this might be for you. I didn't find any of these stories funny. Admittedly, the New Yorker's style of humor isn't my jig in the first place.

There is no arc to any of these stories, no great lessons, no emotional experiences for the characters or the author herself. For someone so fond of wide open spaces the author seems awfully neurotic. At one point her friend calls her spiritual. I don't buy it for a second. She approaches everyone she meets with a blend of curiosity and annoyance that sometimes quickly becomes disdain or just plain prejudice. She floats around New York skimming over the tops of people's lives. What is the point of reading these stories? What is a reader supposed to get out of this? Some notion that the world would be a better place if Bill Clinton had a better haircut, or everyone passionately avoided yin nightshade vegetables, or if there were more than two shades of green floor paint?

Some writers just want to be heard. I suppose it satisfies their egos. I'm not without my own prejudices - such as assuming middle age women who are rude and always think they're right must be immature. I should have stopped reading this book a few stories into it because it just became me ranting in my head against the author. Sorry I didn't get the joke.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

"There was no ultimate goal, after all. I'd noticed this before--that those who were not going insane just kept moving. People were calm as they went about their daily rounds of wrong choices and futile pursuits."

"I didn't know what a conversation was anymore, just as I didn't know what a tomato was anymore. I'd see one and I'd want it. Then I'd cut into it, and when I saw those seeds and that juice I'd think, 'What is a tomato? Does anyone really know?' Then I'd eat it anyway."

"When the men greeted each other in the street or in a restaurant they'd say, 'Hey, what's happening?' and the answer was usually 'Hey,' because what could be happening? These men would grin in genuine happiness at seeing each other--there was a bond of emptiness between them."

"Our life there sounded so dull. And as I realized now how dull these evenings sounded, I remembered that Dr. Loquesto had warned me of this. 'What do you want to go there for? You just go to the beach. How dull!' When I said we didn't stay at the beach but biked into the sunset and walked through the moors picking beach plums, he yelled, 'Even worse!' And when I gave his family some beach-plum jelly I'd made from the picked plums, he tasted it and made a face."

"People were lucky to have lived in bygone eras, I thought, even though they're dead now."

[michelle]

If David Sadaris was a women who was far more neurotic and lived on the upper east side of Manhattan and summered in Nantucket; I believe, thus far, he would be writing this book. Which rules.

[Joyce · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ms. Hecht refuses to play it safe with her heroine, whose eye for detail is deadly. Nothing and no one, including herself, is exempt. She has devastating things to say about the way people look and act. The ethical implications of Gary Hart's comb-over, the poor quality of contemporary ''peanut-eating styles,'' the exact topography of a certain kind of ''toupee mistake'' are all scrutinized, interrogated and catalogued; she compulsively sorts out the surfaces of the world as if looking for evidence or trying to solve for x. Acutely aware of time, place and history, she identifies a man as ''so young he was from the generation of human beings who use the word 'like' to mean 'said.' ''
--New York Times, Elizabeth Frank (Jan 26, 1997)

These originally ran as essays in the New Yorker.

[Sierra · Rating 1 out of 5]

Are you a self proclaimed Karen? Are you a vaguely racist, middle aged, upper middle class snob with a penchant for judging people baselessly? Because that is the only way that this book is for you. Worst thing I have read this year. The unnamed neurotic main character isn't funny, insightful, likable, or relatable in any real way. These stories did not age well and are also not very relatable. This "hilarious" set of stories did have me slightly chuckle a couple of times, but it was few, far between, and not even in every story. Overall it wasn't an enjoyable read, the stories do not get any better, and it was not even close to a representation of "the mania of modern day" because no ones days are like this.

[Shannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good writing just not a world I wish to inhabit.

[derek allard · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve come across an occasional story from Julie Hecht in a literary journal or an anthology and was always impressed by her unique voice. This is her first short story collection and it is a wow collection. Within are interlinked stories all told by a distinctive first person female narrator who believes in macrobiotic diets, feminism, nature, and is obsessed with her reproductive surgeon Dr. Arnold Loquesto. But it’s not an obsession like you might think. She’s a photographer who has or has attempted to photograph him and his family several times. Loquesto is the thread binding these stories together and one can’t help but wonder why this obsession. Her husband and is indifferent to her, which is a clue as is her off kilter analysis of the world around her. It’s this darker inferred but never explicitly stated relationship with her esteemed reproductive surgeon that gives this collection a weight and lingers long after reading. But talking about darkness and weight alone isn’t right, because these stories are uproariously funny and also damning of the upper class world she herself is part of. No easy feat but Julie Hecht pulls it off effortlessly. All the stories in this collection are excellent and “The World of Ideas,” which centers around her tomato and rug obsessed neighbor, is one of the best stories I’ve ever read. Bravo to the author for pulling this off. It’s an amazing collection.

[Daniel · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’ve been thinking about readability. It's been difficult for me to concentrate on reading during the pandemic. I found this book on my bookshelf that I’d never seen before. I mean, there’s tons of books that I own that I’ve never read, but I’m used to seeing them on my shelves. This one I don’t recall at all. All the blurbs on the cover talk about how absolutely hilarious it is and I could use some hilarity in my life so I gave it a try. And it was an odd reading experience. It was not funny at all and I can’t say that I enjoyed it at all, but it was really readable. I didn’t like the book, but I enjoyed the experience of reading without putting any effort into concentrating on it. Is this how people who are ashamed of reading ‘trashy’ literature feel? It wasn’t hate reading either. I didn’t enjoy it, but it didn’t grate at me either. Just mildly bad with an unlikeable authorial voice.

[Becky Marder-Reifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought I might enjoy this book because it’s set in New York where I currently live, but I don’t think it was my type of humor. It was a quick read and entertaining at times but I wouldn’t read it again.

[Caroline H · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the funniest books I’ve read in a while. I shed tears of laughter reading the story : Do The Windows Open? while on my break at work. Julie Hecht’s anxious descriptions flit back and forth between hilariously manic and hilariously maniacal. The way she tells a story about getting her glasses fixed and the FEAR of the optometrist, or just her fear of doing any basic daily task really is like seeing inside her head and seeing one thought after another ping through a pin ball machine.

[Bridget Bonaparte · Rating 4 out of 5]

Funny, neurotic, exactly what you’d expect from a collection of stories originally published in the New Yorker

[Hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

this book is kind of how i feel about my dentist.

[Stephanie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Awful, neurotic, spoiled white lady stories that are in no way edifying and only mildly entertaining. Like being stuck in the brain if your most self obsessed friend who you ditched a decade previous. Three stories in and the strongest feeling they've inspired us the desire to choke this first-world-problem-ridden woman until she shuts up about not liking to go into midtown Manhattan. Ugh

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

A series of linked stories, told in the first person, all about a neurotic, quirky, observant and judgmental married resident of East Hampton, who summers on Nantucket. The unnamed narrator is obsessed with healthy eating, appearances, celebrities and the world-renowned reproductive surgeon, Dr. Arnold Loquesto, whom she has photographed with his dog as one of her odd photography projects. The stories are clearly meant to be spoofs of certain well-off residents of the Hamptons and are amusing in a dry, witty way. Not hilarious, but mildly amusing. Perhaps they are funnier if you actually live in that area, or belong to a certain social class, as the author seems to. Dr. Loquesto provides great comic relief with his opinionated ways, loutish behavior and speech that is always delivered in a yell. I wish that there had been more of him.

The stories were originally published at different times in The New Yorker, and they probably work better in a magazine setting. When they are collected in a book and you read one right after the other, they get a bit tiresome. Still, the author is a fine writer with a keen eye for satire, and someone else may get more out of the stories than I did. My verdict: ok, not great.

[Alex Flynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

How can such a loud voice be so quietly sad? Julie Hecht's book, somewhere between novel and connected short stories focuses on the neurotic life of a macrobiotic vegetarian, fixated on seeming trivialities and projects with no purpose, whose deep unhappiness is cleverly disguised from the reader and herself. It was hard to get into at first, as it is rife with what are often disparaged as "first world problems" and seeing the world through her eyes is rather unpleasant. But by Lovely Day the book reveals itself as something amazing and worth your attention.

[Eve · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is rather old. I read it when it was first published. I bought the book and I still have it which is saying a lot since I've culled through my bookshelves many times. Wry, sad, funny, this book has it all. The author's voice is neurotic and extremely cosmopolitan. I take it off the shelf and re-read it once every couple of years. It never fails to entertain, enlighten, and amuse me. Still a strong recommend.

[Jay]

The voice of this book is easy to get sick of in the less eventful stories, easy to love in the book's best moments: Fussy, smart, slanted in its perceptions, anxious, appetitive, dashing, busted at times. My favorite by a long shot is the title story.

[Jamey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Incredibly annoying. First person narration from a neurotic protagonist with whom one wouldn't want to spend a minute. Plenty of talent in the writer, but this text was a chore. I stopped at page 35.

[Nina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I found my soul mate in these words.

[Ariana Blaustein · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want to write like this

[Ron · Rating 2 out of 5]

(This review duplicates my thoughts of the author's similar collection of essays, "Happy Trails to You.")

In a recent "what are you reading?" interview in the NYT Books section, the novelist Julie Otsuka was asked which writers she admires most: "I would do anything to read a new short story by Julie Hecht, who gets my vote for funniest writer." I'd never heard of Hecht, so decided to explore her work.

I imagine, in the '90s, these essays might have struck some readers as amusing and engrossing. In the current era, they read pretty slow, not that funny, dated, and too often, dull. An East Hamptons Erma Bombeck, with sprinkles of Nora Ephron, shades of Andy Rooney. Those too were great successes in their time, but a lot of their schtick doesn't hold up so great.

That said, I agree with Otsuka, it might indeed be interesting to see a new piece by Hecht, to see whether or how her work might have evolved with the times, and particularly to see if she might get to the point quicker. Couldn't help but think that some of these 20-page essays should have been condensed into two.

[Mike Crawford · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m tempted to take a star off because I feel like any book that you finish only after you’re well into the third decade of reading it — that says something, doesn’t it? I mean, it should say SOMETHING but honestly what. At least I figure it must be kind of a negative star. Or maybe not and I just get a gold star for determination. Or “I read this book for over 20 years and all I got was this stupid Goodreads participation trophy?” No, more than that - after all you all also get this review. You’re welcome.

I started reading this book in my twenties, didn’t get too far, and the same can be said for my thirties. But I found that I liked the last essays/chapters and it isn’t clear if they were objectively better or subjectively so given that by the time I encountered them my life had entered into a phase that was now objectively more similar to that of the main character.

So instead of denying premature middle age tendencies like I’d done in earlier epochs, now I entertain them - momentarily - before derisively dismissing them and getting back to middle aged things.

[Jeanine]

This was an interesting book, short stories about one middle-aged woman who, to put it mildly, has a lot of "issues." Certainly a racist, xenophobic & neurotic, it can be easy to dislike this woman. However, after reading a few stories, I felt more sorry for her. She lives in her own world, with lots of fear, even of going into midtown-Manhattan, or seeing her optometrist, etc. She is a sad character.
There is a bit of humor in the book, though I do not see it as hilarious as described on the book's cover.

[Rach]

This maybe would have hit at another time (I started reading and was like, oh she’s like Miranda July!…maybe not lol), but a book about an anxious liberal spiraling to herself about societal degradation was simply *not* the vibe I needed to be around at this time (she was shockingly ahead of her time/I’m in this photo and I don’t like it). I do like the collection of short stories all from the same narrator conceit.

[Vanessa · Rating 1 out of 5]

It could just be what's going on right now (COVID-19) but I can't deal with this book. It's stressing me out. I got to page 40 and I'm going to drop it. I, too, have taken the BQE and Long Island Expressway and agonized over certain death, but I don't want to feel that right now.

[Lucy Turnipseed · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wish I could do 3.5… described as “darkly funny” but sometimes just anxious and repetitive. But I did like the settings and the cleverness and reading it over time. Bought it at a bookstore because the man said she was a talented local writer

[Vida · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was recommended by a good friend, but I found the stories to be incredibly tedious.

[Kristen Freiburger · Rating 1 out of 5]

The author annoyed me from start to finish. Pompous and melodramatic.

[Kathy Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wry, wicked, unlikeable person, yet I enjoyed every word. Hope ain’t never meet anyone like this!

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Odd, funny, breezy and ultimately satisfying