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You Never Get It Back
The linked stories in Cara Blue Adams’s precise and observant collection offer elegantly constructed glimpses of the life of Kate, a young woman from rural New England, moving between her childhood in the countryside of Vermont and her twenties and thirties in the northeast, southwest, and South in pursuit of a vocation, first as a research scientist and later as a writer. Place is a palpable presence: Boston in winter, Maine in summer, Virginia’s lush hillsides, the open New Mexico sky. Along the way, we meet Kate’s difficult bohemian mother and younger sister, her privileged college roommate, and the various men Kate dates as she struggles to define what she wants from the world on her own terms.
Wryly funny and shot through with surprising flashes of anger, these smart, dreamy, searching stories show us a young woman grappling with social class, gender, ambition, violence, and the distance between longing and having.
Wryly funny and shot through with surprising flashes of anger, these smart, dreamy, searching stories show us a young woman grappling with social class, gender, ambition, violence, and the distance between longing and having.
208 pages, Paperback
First published December 15, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 99 reviews
December 28, 2021
With keen perceptiveness and emotional acuity, Cara Blue Adams has crafted an ode to longing by examining loss in all its forms. Through linked short stories, the collection mostly follows one woman, Kate, throughout her life as she navigates love, death, poverty, fraught familial relationships, and being an adrift young adult. Kate’s trauma is unfolded throughout the stories, each standing on their own yet informing the larger narrative Adams cleverly crafts.
The writing immediately attached to my heart - books about longing are the niche that does it for me every time. Aside from the precision of her sentences and insights, Adams explores a range of storytelling techniques throughout the collection - she places Kate in numerous settings and flits between first person, third person, and occasionally explores different characters which inform the themes of the collection. Notably, the brief first story plays with surrealism - a tailor takes the measurements a man named “Loss” whose job is to document people’s losses, big or small, metaphorical or tangible. There is an assuredness to the craft that floored me. Adams takes risks and trusts the reader to follow her. As the collection won this year’s John Simmons Short Fiction Award, judged by king Brandon Taylor, I knew this was going to be excellent, but I did not expect to fall in love with this book as much as I did. This is one of those rare books that hit me right when I needed it, at once a flaying of the soul and a warm hug. Please read it.
The writing immediately attached to my heart - books about longing are the niche that does it for me every time. Aside from the precision of her sentences and insights, Adams explores a range of storytelling techniques throughout the collection - she places Kate in numerous settings and flits between first person, third person, and occasionally explores different characters which inform the themes of the collection. Notably, the brief first story plays with surrealism - a tailor takes the measurements a man named “Loss” whose job is to document people’s losses, big or small, metaphorical or tangible. There is an assuredness to the craft that floored me. Adams takes risks and trusts the reader to follow her. As the collection won this year’s John Simmons Short Fiction Award, judged by king Brandon Taylor, I knew this was going to be excellent, but I did not expect to fall in love with this book as much as I did. This is one of those rare books that hit me right when I needed it, at once a flaying of the soul and a warm hug. Please read it.
July 25, 2021
I’m the first to rate and review this book on here. Oh, the responsibility, the responsibility…
Ok, so, let’s talk about it…
There’s a very specific sort of literature out there, a finely crafted and composed works that practically scream of the years it took to produce them in many literary workshops and writers colonies. It shows everywhere from the meticulously arranged mise en scene to the precisely etched characters. And oftentimes the trees are so perfectly arranged that the forest gets forgotten. Which is to say the details are fine, but the grand picture is underwhelming.
This novel is a really good example of that. It’s well written with tremendous attention to detail, but overall it doesn’t actually offer all that much outside of a strangely vague (for all the detail) portrait of a protagonist as a young woman. Well, young and youngish, it leaves off with her at 31 or so.
The book is structured like a collection of short stories or vignettes, but it’s actually a proper novel with a proper protagonist, Kate. And her journey from a wintery small town in New England and life with a younger sister a depressed single mother to a scorchingly hot Arizona, a career and love affairs. It’s compelling enough of a journey to entice the reader, meaning the narrative itself works. There’s just this thing…after spending all that time with Kate, you don’t really get her as a person. She’s a vague, aloof, distant sort of a protagonist and she maintains that throughout. She’s reticent when it comes to romance, she’s nice enough but never striking in any way, she’s kind of a milquetoast of a person. Or maybe she’s just written that way.
And her trajectory has a very women’s fiction thing to it. And so in the end the book does too.
Overall, it’s a fine read and coming in under 200 pages it doesn’t overstay its welcome, but it doesn’t quite grab the reader the way you’d want a book to. It just passes by, like scenes from life, faintly charming and then just faint. A very typical university press novel. Competently executed, eloquent, elegant even, but done in very muted tones with a lovely ending to lift it up.
Might work differently for different readers. Who knows. But you know the thing about time is that you never get it back. Thanks Netgalley.
This and more at https://advancetheplot.weebly.com/
Ok, so, let’s talk about it…
There’s a very specific sort of literature out there, a finely crafted and composed works that practically scream of the years it took to produce them in many literary workshops and writers colonies. It shows everywhere from the meticulously arranged mise en scene to the precisely etched characters. And oftentimes the trees are so perfectly arranged that the forest gets forgotten. Which is to say the details are fine, but the grand picture is underwhelming.
This novel is a really good example of that. It’s well written with tremendous attention to detail, but overall it doesn’t actually offer all that much outside of a strangely vague (for all the detail) portrait of a protagonist as a young woman. Well, young and youngish, it leaves off with her at 31 or so.
The book is structured like a collection of short stories or vignettes, but it’s actually a proper novel with a proper protagonist, Kate. And her journey from a wintery small town in New England and life with a younger sister a depressed single mother to a scorchingly hot Arizona, a career and love affairs. It’s compelling enough of a journey to entice the reader, meaning the narrative itself works. There’s just this thing…after spending all that time with Kate, you don’t really get her as a person. She’s a vague, aloof, distant sort of a protagonist and she maintains that throughout. She’s reticent when it comes to romance, she’s nice enough but never striking in any way, she’s kind of a milquetoast of a person. Or maybe she’s just written that way.
And her trajectory has a very women’s fiction thing to it. And so in the end the book does too.
Overall, it’s a fine read and coming in under 200 pages it doesn’t overstay its welcome, but it doesn’t quite grab the reader the way you’d want a book to. It just passes by, like scenes from life, faintly charming and then just faint. A very typical university press novel. Competently executed, eloquent, elegant even, but done in very muted tones with a lovely ending to lift it up.
Might work differently for different readers. Who knows. But you know the thing about time is that you never get it back. Thanks Netgalley.
This and more at https://advancetheplot.weebly.com/
December 1, 2022
The title of this linked collection of stories keeps eluding me - I can't keep it in my mind. And what is similarly elusive is the nature of Kate Bishop, it is she who mostly links together these stories that are thematically about loss and forms of longing. The first story in any collection often sets a tone, perhaps expectations for what will unfold, but the first story here is not about Kate, but rather a metaphorical story about a tailor fitting a suit on a man named Loss, whose job is to catalogue people's losses, and the tailor forgoes half the payment in order to receive a list of the tailor's personal losses - things the tailor does not remember losing or missing - can you miss what you don't remember? We never read about the tailor again, instead the rest of the collection is divided into three sections: stories about Kate at various times in her life, as a single mother and younger sister, at odds with her own mother for reasons that can be guessed at, but are not explained, Kate's sticky relationships with other relatives, we learn of her absent drug addict father, the lack of money, going to college, graduate school, studying science, leaving grad school to write, her wealthy friend Esme who was Kate's college roommate, their friendship somehow continuing despite all their differences, Esme perhaps the antithesis of Kate, knowing, or thinking she knows, who she is, what she wants from life, what she is entitled to expect from life, the men Kate dates, throughout trying to find her place, or a place, in the world. She is curiously passive, and though her awareness grows through the stories, she is not a particularly compelling character -always at a remove, from herself, from her thoughts, from the reader; it's a strange authorial choice to center a character whose outlines are so blurry, far more blurry than other of the characters, but the stories themselves are compelling and carried me along, kept me interested in the accrual of Kate's experiences, the places that create her life at various times - New England, the South, New Mexico, Boston, etc. It's a thoughtful and layered collection.
December 19, 2021
You Never Get It Back’s linked stories follow Kate as she navigates young adulthood. Between each story, there’s a jump in time of about a few months or years. Some of the peripheral characters you also get to see in more than one story. Recurring themes include her relationship with her mother, sister and boyfriends; her work, in a lab and as a writer and teacher; her friendships; her childhood; and, perhaps most importantly, a kind of aimlessness that seems to permeate her life.
Every story has a new setting. One of this collection’s strengths is its ability to immerse us in each small universe quickly and seamlessly. Having Kate as the linking thread helps, but there’s more to it than that—I’m not sure what it is. In any case, The Sea Latch, in particular, will stay with me I’m sure, as it reminded me of my trips to Florida with my parents as a kid (staying in cheap roadside motels, being close to the ocean, etc.). Reading this story was a comforting and nostalgic experience.
You Never Get It Back’s beauty will sneak up on you, quietly. To me, each new story felt stronger than the last, and by the end, I found myself wishing there was more.
I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys linked collections, and those who liked Filthy Animals by Brandon Taylor or I Hold a Wolf By the Ears by Laura van den Berg.
Thanks to the University of Iowa Press for the advance copy of this book.
Every story has a new setting. One of this collection’s strengths is its ability to immerse us in each small universe quickly and seamlessly. Having Kate as the linking thread helps, but there’s more to it than that—I’m not sure what it is. In any case, The Sea Latch, in particular, will stay with me I’m sure, as it reminded me of my trips to Florida with my parents as a kid (staying in cheap roadside motels, being close to the ocean, etc.). Reading this story was a comforting and nostalgic experience.
You Never Get It Back’s beauty will sneak up on you, quietly. To me, each new story felt stronger than the last, and by the end, I found myself wishing there was more.
I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys linked collections, and those who liked Filthy Animals by Brandon Taylor or I Hold a Wolf By the Ears by Laura van den Berg.
Thanks to the University of Iowa Press for the advance copy of this book.
December 31, 2021
Beautiful stories that just made me feel very nice to read. I liked all of them but The Sea Latch is so so excellent.
December 13, 2021
via my blog: https://bookstalkerblog.wordpress.com/
𝐈 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐠𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞, 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐩𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞, 𝐬𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐬.
This collection of connected stories is a journey into Kate’s life, as she finds place and meaning whether in the lush countryside, mountains, city or the desert. In college, Kate is the ‘disadvantaged’ friend juggling her course load for a career as a research scientist. Just moving towards a future different from the life her mother lives, wishing to be something else, as so many young women do. The past, through pivotal moments in her life, feels far away but it never is. She spends much of her early years waiting for life to happen, and when she makes choices about leaving, she wonders what staying would have meant, could have changed, particularly in love relationships. How do we get from one place to another, so far away from where we began? Her sister Agnes and mother seem to live in their own world, one she can’t help but judge- having grown up without much money after her parents’ divorce, Kate can only worry the trouble she imagines her sister’s future will be based on the choices she makes. Choices that are similar to their own mother’s, a college drop out, married young, divorced, struggling to pay bills and raise her daughters.
Each story provides glimpses into her life and the places she lives, deserts, countryside lend just as much feeling as the people who move through her. The two stories that moved me most were Charity and Seeing Clear. Although much of the stories focus on relationships with men she has loved or failed to love enough, it is the revelations about her mother and father that made me understand Kate and her troubled sister Agnes more. In Charity, I got the feeling they are the children of the black sheep in her mother’s family. There is also the resentment of not having enough, the expectations of family who don’t seem to understand your struggles, or is it simply her mother has decided to think a certain way and that’s that? Yes, the burn of class division is often felt most within one’s own family. In Seeing Clear, the reader understands even more the weight of Kate’s sadness, what made her strive for college as a means of lifting her out of unhappiness. Those two stories, for me, were the heaviest. Her fears of marriage and many choices make sense. How she worries about her sister and thinks she knows best, maybe she does, maybe she doesn’t.
It’s a story of coming into oneself, because we are always coming of age, with every experience, trying to understand our lives, all the choices and each other. Of course there are struggles, so much goes awry, it is easy to mess up even when we’re trying to be good. This is quiet novel but, for me at least, easy to relate to and engaging.
Publication Date: December 15, 2021
University of Iowa Press
𝐈 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐠𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞, 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐩𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞, 𝐬𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐬.
This collection of connected stories is a journey into Kate’s life, as she finds place and meaning whether in the lush countryside, mountains, city or the desert. In college, Kate is the ‘disadvantaged’ friend juggling her course load for a career as a research scientist. Just moving towards a future different from the life her mother lives, wishing to be something else, as so many young women do. The past, through pivotal moments in her life, feels far away but it never is. She spends much of her early years waiting for life to happen, and when she makes choices about leaving, she wonders what staying would have meant, could have changed, particularly in love relationships. How do we get from one place to another, so far away from where we began? Her sister Agnes and mother seem to live in their own world, one she can’t help but judge- having grown up without much money after her parents’ divorce, Kate can only worry the trouble she imagines her sister’s future will be based on the choices she makes. Choices that are similar to their own mother’s, a college drop out, married young, divorced, struggling to pay bills and raise her daughters.
Each story provides glimpses into her life and the places she lives, deserts, countryside lend just as much feeling as the people who move through her. The two stories that moved me most were Charity and Seeing Clear. Although much of the stories focus on relationships with men she has loved or failed to love enough, it is the revelations about her mother and father that made me understand Kate and her troubled sister Agnes more. In Charity, I got the feeling they are the children of the black sheep in her mother’s family. There is also the resentment of not having enough, the expectations of family who don’t seem to understand your struggles, or is it simply her mother has decided to think a certain way and that’s that? Yes, the burn of class division is often felt most within one’s own family. In Seeing Clear, the reader understands even more the weight of Kate’s sadness, what made her strive for college as a means of lifting her out of unhappiness. Those two stories, for me, were the heaviest. Her fears of marriage and many choices make sense. How she worries about her sister and thinks she knows best, maybe she does, maybe she doesn’t.
It’s a story of coming into oneself, because we are always coming of age, with every experience, trying to understand our lives, all the choices and each other. Of course there are struggles, so much goes awry, it is easy to mess up even when we’re trying to be good. This is quiet novel but, for me at least, easy to relate to and engaging.
Publication Date: December 15, 2021
University of Iowa Press
June 11, 2022
Finished this book on my lil flight to Vienna today💫 Honestly, for whatever reason, lately I’ve been drawn to books that emphasize coming of age and find yourself through the mistakes and changes that come with going through young adulthood. Maybe I’m just gravitating towards possible wisdom to apply to my own life.
This book follows the main character Kate in the form of non-chronological short stories and snapshots of moments that range from her college years to her late twenties/early thirties. I honestly didn’t realize this was a wider narrative and not just a random short story compilation until the third story, when I realized name repeats haha. I think it’s interesting how the point of view switches between third person and first person. I also think the choice in order for the stories (which aren’t chronological) as well as the years in between each was interesting too.
Overall, I like that Kate is flawed. She has trust issues. She wants to puzzle out the world and know what to do for herself, and at the same time, she feels like she knows nothing at all. The stories of heartbreak and piecing herself back together and realizing that in some ways, she’s always been broken was all very powerful to read. This book is one of my new favorites, and I’m glad I randomly picked it off the shelf of a bookstore.
This book follows the main character Kate in the form of non-chronological short stories and snapshots of moments that range from her college years to her late twenties/early thirties. I honestly didn’t realize this was a wider narrative and not just a random short story compilation until the third story, when I realized name repeats haha. I think it’s interesting how the point of view switches between third person and first person. I also think the choice in order for the stories (which aren’t chronological) as well as the years in between each was interesting too.
Overall, I like that Kate is flawed. She has trust issues. She wants to puzzle out the world and know what to do for herself, and at the same time, she feels like she knows nothing at all. The stories of heartbreak and piecing herself back together and realizing that in some ways, she’s always been broken was all very powerful to read. This book is one of my new favorites, and I’m glad I randomly picked it off the shelf of a bookstore.
April 7, 2022
If this is not my favorite book of the year, it will definitely be on my list. Like wow. I am so happy I’m finally starting to find more writing I can connect with again. It feels so so good.
But anyways, You Never Get It Back is a stunning collection of linked short stories focused on longing, grief, one’s place in this world, and what it all means. We follow Kate our narrator from childhood, to college, to her professional career in academia. We delve deep into her friendships, partners, and family life and it all felt so relatable. I loved that our narrator stayed the same in each story. It gave me a chance to almost feel as though I was growing and learning with her. If you have been wanting to get into short stories I think this is a great place to start. It was so smart, introspective, and observational. I cried more than once and would do it all over again. I can’t wait to see what else Cara Blue Adams writes in the future.
But anyways, You Never Get It Back is a stunning collection of linked short stories focused on longing, grief, one’s place in this world, and what it all means. We follow Kate our narrator from childhood, to college, to her professional career in academia. We delve deep into her friendships, partners, and family life and it all felt so relatable. I loved that our narrator stayed the same in each story. It gave me a chance to almost feel as though I was growing and learning with her. If you have been wanting to get into short stories I think this is a great place to start. It was so smart, introspective, and observational. I cried more than once and would do it all over again. I can’t wait to see what else Cara Blue Adams writes in the future.
April 20, 2022
A beautifully crafted collection of linked short stories featuring wonderfully rich characters and a highly observant narrator. Highly recommended.
December 14, 2021
Stunning! Gorgeous! A beautiful book laid out in a unique way that truly left me emotionally affected - family and female relationships are at the core of this beautiful book. It’s written in a way that is complex and nuanced and careful in its words - how does someone write so beautifully and thoroughly in such a small book? I’m buying for everyone for holiday gifts. Lovely. Can you tell I loved it? Thanks to university of Iowa Press for the true gift of an advanced copy of this book. I’m so grateful.
January 26, 2022
Loved this short story collection. Read it slowly. Sent a link to the first story to all my writing friends. (You can find it through author's name and Kenyon Magazine.) But it's worth following Kate Bishop through these stories that relate life in her twenties. There's something special that is hard to put into words. And I think that's why critics are calling this an instant classic. Two stories near the end felt like they could have benefited from one more draft but the others shine, so five stars.
December 27, 2021
I enjoyed this so much, and not just because I’m a pretty ideal reader for this collection of linked stories. I appreciate how grounded the characters are even as they try to navigate lives of academia and creativity. Beautiful descriptions. No easy answers.
January 15, 2022
Cara Blue Adam’s YOU NEVER GET IT BACK is a masterclass in storytelling. I want to compare this book to a fire, shining so brightly, but most fires eventually go out. This book won’t—it will keep on burning.
October 20, 2022
Okay my review was too harsh, so this is my redo:
This book: victim blames rape survivors, stigmatizes HIV, has lots of internalized misogyny, and racial stereotypes, and these are never brought up again or resolved.
This book: victim blames rape survivors, stigmatizes HIV, has lots of internalized misogyny, and racial stereotypes, and these are never brought up again or resolved.
April 30, 2022
linked short stories are my fave & these are SO GOOD. review to follow.
January 13, 2022
There are some writers whose words I am in awe of, who seem to have a gift for observing the banal and transforming it into something profound and meaningful, and managing to titillate us along the way. Alice Munro and Lucia Berlin come to mind as masters of this technique, writing passages of pure lyrical prose that, at first glance, feel like confidences being uttered by a close friend in low tones in a secluded corner of a restaurant. There was a similarly warm and intimate tone in You Never Get It Back, but as if the narrator was recounting things as they happened, just not as they happened to her necessarily, the bottom line being that we don't get to know what she's feeling or thinking as much as what's happening around her. The book chronicles Kate through her 20s and 30s as she meanders through a series of graduate programs and jobs in various parts of the country, longing to escape her impoverished childhood in rural Vermont. The writing is outstanding, though, perhaps a tad too polished, too precise, for it to be believable, as another Goodreads reviewer mentioned. For example, Kate's college roommate conveniently happens to be the exact polar opposite of her: wealthy, spoiled, and entitled, she breezes through life with ease, attending graduate school only because of its status, dating people with the most earning potential, etc...Though generous, she often makes stunningly ignorant comments about Kate's ability to afford certain things or her compatibility with someone simply because they grew up poor and “overcame things”? I mean, do intelligent people really make these kind of awful, insensitive comments in this day and age (and in front of other people, no less)? I get that the author was trying to make a point about Kate's struggle to improve her prospects in life, but I was flummoxed as to how these two were supposed to be compatible, much less best friends.
At the same time, there were passages where Cara Blue Adams manages to very accurately channel the deep reserve of tension and resentment that dysfunctional family get-togethers can exclusively lay claim to:
Despite my quibbling, there was plenty of heart-rending moments, like the story with the old, sick dog that I can't even think about without my lower lip quivering (and I'm technically a “cat person”)! Plus, I love her descriptive way of phrasing things, and I have a habit of giving authors quite a bit of slack in the plot department if the writing makes me weak in the knees. I recommend for an engaging read.
At the same time, there were passages where Cara Blue Adams manages to very accurately channel the deep reserve of tension and resentment that dysfunctional family get-togethers can exclusively lay claim to:
Dinner is quiet. No one knows what to say. It is like dinner with strangers, but more treacherous. We pass the serving dishes efficiently, a line of sandbaggers moving to stanch a leak. The green beans are the frozen kind, and the cranberry sauce is still shaped like the can it came from. We eat fast.
Despite my quibbling, there was plenty of heart-rending moments, like the story with the old, sick dog that I can't even think about without my lower lip quivering (and I'm technically a “cat person”)! Plus, I love her descriptive way of phrasing things, and I have a habit of giving authors quite a bit of slack in the plot department if the writing makes me weak in the knees. I recommend for an engaging read.
February 16, 2022
There's a melancholy tone to these stories, almost all of which feature the same first-person narrator who we (sort of) come to know through her unsentimental recounting of loss, troubled relationships, life and career missteps, and some brief moments of happiness. The writing is the attraction here--vivid descriptions of the natural world and the settings in general, spare evocations of feelings and emotions. I found the earlier stories in the collection to be stronger than the last few...there is an overwhelming sense of quiet heartbreak evoked by the best of the stories, and I found them very moving and real.
December 12, 2021
Digital ARC provided by Netgalley
The story of Kate is followed in connected short stories that present like episodes of a series different milestones in her life. We can easily see how Kate’s life and relationships evolve gradually in each story.
It took a while for me to finish it since it can be complicated on the way with everything that happens to the character and the decisions she is taking. Maybe some more details to be provided about what happened to the different characters she met during each episode it would have helped for a faster read and more interest from my side.
The story of Kate is followed in connected short stories that present like episodes of a series different milestones in her life. We can easily see how Kate’s life and relationships evolve gradually in each story.
It took a while for me to finish it since it can be complicated on the way with everything that happens to the character and the decisions she is taking. Maybe some more details to be provided about what happened to the different characters she met during each episode it would have helped for a faster read and more interest from my side.
September 3, 2022
I loved this book. It doesn’t pull readers in but more keeps them at an arms length, giving an air of wistfulness and general mystery, which probably drives some people crazy but I really enjoyed in this context. The sense of place was so vivid I could really imagine each one. The aloofness of the characters let me focus on the craft of the story. Perhaps this is only a 5 star book to me right now as a student taking a fiction writing class because it is a great learning tool! Fun read, if you like The New Yorker fiction section you’ll like this.
March 27, 2024
4.5/5 stars.
such a beautiful story that focuses on different facets of loss throughout life. i didn’t expect to love this as much as i did and im so glad i randomly purchased this at a used bookstore <3
such a beautiful story that focuses on different facets of loss throughout life. i didn’t expect to love this as much as i did and im so glad i randomly purchased this at a used bookstore <3
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December 3, 2021Thanks to the University of Iowa press and NetGalley for the early read.
April 19, 2022
Beautifully and precisely written, there are moments in these linked stories that will stay with you.
May 10, 2022
The protagonist Kate is a sympathetic character whose short life has transposed many different worlds. From Williams, to MIT’s Cambridge, to leaving the northeast for Arizona, and ultimately Louisiana, her friends from each are about as diverse as the geographic areas from where she met them.
Within her family lies another dynamic, a world of three women and she being the lucky enough soul to obtain an education before pregnancy prohibited the same. Her father, as strange a character as the novel presents, could have had a much more impactful impression upon another book’s character. Somehow, he is more apparition than a figure. Kate is not daddy’s little girl.
The tightly woven narration of Kate’s chronologically delivered events, mainly from college teen to middle thirties, is beautifully done.
The last chapter, her wedding where those each-unique-to-the-others friends converge to make the day even more special, makes a great depiction of how our worlds, like Kate’s, include so many different fabrics and how our friends only know one another through the awkward coincidence of knowing the common other.
My favorite character may be the old blinding artist from New York. He seemed to have layers of lifetime stories. I would think he, more than any of the other characters, could be an inspiration for a new novel.
This is a the first novel by a very talented writer. I look forward to her next.
Within her family lies another dynamic, a world of three women and she being the lucky enough soul to obtain an education before pregnancy prohibited the same. Her father, as strange a character as the novel presents, could have had a much more impactful impression upon another book’s character. Somehow, he is more apparition than a figure. Kate is not daddy’s little girl.
The tightly woven narration of Kate’s chronologically delivered events, mainly from college teen to middle thirties, is beautifully done.
The last chapter, her wedding where those each-unique-to-the-others friends converge to make the day even more special, makes a great depiction of how our worlds, like Kate’s, include so many different fabrics and how our friends only know one another through the awkward coincidence of knowing the common other.
My favorite character may be the old blinding artist from New York. He seemed to have layers of lifetime stories. I would think he, more than any of the other characters, could be an inspiration for a new novel.
This is a the first novel by a very talented writer. I look forward to her next.
July 12, 2024
the sea latch and desert light were so beautiful
November 23, 2024
i really liked the final section the most and also the opening chapter
February 19, 2022
Was filled with very descriptive scenes, but the book was so depressing
April 23, 2022
This is a stunning collection. I don't actually read short stories very much. The fact that these were all linked and had the same main character really helped me enjoy them and stay engaged. Well done.
July 23, 2023
briefly dipped to 3 stars in the middle but made up for it at the end. loving these interlinked short story collections!! they are really helping with my writer’s block <3
April 5, 2022
A perfectly crafted collection of linked stories that follow the life of Kate Bishop, a woman with a good head on her shoulders despite her challenging family. I found this to be an extremely satisfying read, especially the title story, which is simply devastating. I also loved the end--I felt like a proud parent, seeing Kate flourish. Every moment of this collection is human and humane.
March 29, 2022
I really enjoyed this collection. It made me re-rate a few of the books I just read (lower). Adams' writing is unpretentious and almost reminded me of the best stories I read in my college writing seminars/workshops. There is no sense of an audience. It's earnest, human, not without cynicism but not censoriously anti-sentiment. Does any of that make sense? I quietly, satisfyingly loved this book.
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