Thank Your Lucky Stars: Short Stories

by Sherrie Flick

Full of wit and humor, readers will find themselves immersed in big worlds contained in short narratives. From a woman who gets more than what she bargained for to a cowboy down on his luck, these complex stories serve up love and loss, longing and heartbreak, and cruelty and tenderness in poetic images and the most satisfying of moments.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

200 pages, Paperback

Published September 4, 2018

About the author

Sherrie Flick’s debut novel RECONSIDERING HAPPINESS is out with University of Nebraska Press (2009). I CALL THIS FLIRTING, her awarding-winning chapbook of flash fiction, was published in 2004 (Flume Press). Her work appears in the anthologies FLASH FICTION FORWARD (Norton) and NEW SUDDEN FICTION (Norton) as well as THE ROSE METAL PRESS FIELD GUIDE TO WRITING FLASH FICTION. A recipient of a PA Council on the Arts grant and residencies from the Ucross Foundation and Atlantic Center for the Arts, she lives in Pittsburgh where she teaches and works as a freelance writer and editor. For 10 years, she served as Artistic Director for the Gist Street Reading Series. www.giststreet.org

Reviews

[Tara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very few are better at blending simple domesticity and loaded personal relationships. There is a whole universe in the smallest of gestures in Flick's writing. Some wonderful new stories with some older gems.

[Carolyn Breckinridge · Rating 5 out of 5]

The writing of author Sherrie Flick in her short story and flash fiction collection, 'Thank Your Lucky Stars,' delights the reader with brushstrokes of words that create new ways of looking at old objects and situations. Much of this book focuses on relationships, primarily relationships that have gone bad via boredom. Some relationships are not much more than quick hook-ups, others involve long-term commitments. The reader is left with the validation of an already-known truth: Although relationships may end, the memories of them do not. Memories pop in and out of these stories in bittersweet and dynamic ways. Social drinking plays a major role in a number of these pieces, and often appears to be used as a crutch by her characters to help them cope with their lives. This book offers numerous shorter pieces, some a page or less of prose, a description of a person or feeling or time. There is wry humor here, as well as irony, loneliness, missed cues, and ineffective communication. It's not surprising that a large number of these stories were first published in literary journals.

[Lisa Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank Your Lucky Stars is a meditation on relationships. These short stories and flashes illuminate the universal ache for intimacy. Infused with melancholy, humor and ultimately hope, Sherrie Flick offers cinematic vignettes set in bars and kitchens, country roads and creaky back porches overlooking noisy cityscapes and urban gardens. Don’t be fooled by the domestic flourishes of baking bread, gardening and the sipping of tea, Flick is a feminist. Her female characters are infused with wit and passion and strength. They know what they want and have the gumption to get it. In one of my favorite stories, “How I Left Ned”, a young woman stops to buy a few ears of corn from a roadside vendor. Read it and you will never look at corn the same way again:

“By now I'm wanting the corn. Wanting it. I can see the sample ear. It looks so fresh and young and perky. The way a young farmer would look waiting at church on Sunday to shake the preacher's hand. Young. Perky. I wanted it."

[Michelle Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sherrie Flick's stunning stories feel cozy to me. I mean that in the best way possible. It's like I'm in her kitchen eating something delicious, drinking something warm and woozying, and listening to her tell me all she knows about this world we live in.

[Cody Mcdevitt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good writers have the ability to find comedy in one moment and tragedy in another. Great writers can find them in varying degrees throughout their life experiences and the ability to convey that in the stories they tell their readers. Sherrie's compilation of stories and compositions does that, particularly "Expectations," which perfectly captures the frustrations of dating and the unrealistic expectations we carry into it. That itself could be expanded into a book. Highly recommend reading the work.

[Bill O'driscoll · Rating 4 out of 5]

Flick's short fiction is often closer to poetry than to conventional short stories. Though she specializes in flash fiction, she stretches out a bit in a few of the stories here. Funny and lightly fanciful, the stories always carry a powerful emotional undercurrent, one that tends to sneak up on you.

[Valentine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will be returning again and again for the mastery in the short story. These characters are wonderful and dynamic. Flick is a wonderful and concise storyteller. She chooses her words carefully and perfectly.

[Cheyenne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review attached:

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