Interesting Women

by Andrea Lee

From the acclaimed author of Red Island House, Andrea Lee’s brilliant, outrageous collection of short stories confronts identity, desire, colliding cultures, and self-discovery.

In vivid prose infused with wicked irony, award-winning author Andrea Lee takes us into the hearts and minds of a number of extraordinary women—intelligent, beautiful, self-possessed—who, with wit and style, grapple with questions of identity in an increasingly connected world where everyone has become, in some way, a foreigner.

In “The Birthday Present,” a loyal and conventional American wife explores the wilder shores of marital devotion by giving her Italian husband a costly present. “Winter Barley” is the account, alternately lyrical and perverse, of the brief love affair in Scotland between an elderly European prince and a thoroughly modern New England beauty half his age. And in the collection’s title story, “Interesting Women,” a woman on vacation in Thailand reflects with wry detachment on the confessional relationships that spring up between women (“another day, another soul laid bare”), before falling into one herself, which culminates in a hilarious and absurd odyssey through the jungle.

Lee’s beautifully crafted stories offer a rare combination: a sensual evocation of the moment, and profound insight into the underlying struggles—of gender, race, and class—that continue to shape our world. Critically acclaimed when it was first published, this collection is ready to be embraced by a new generation of readers.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Italy, Contemporary, Travel, Literature, African American

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Andrea Lee received her bachelor's and master's degrees from Harvard University.

Lee made her debut in 1981 with a journalistic reflection on life in the Soviet Union, Russian Journal. The book came after a 1978 exchange visit to Moscow State University with her husband when she was 25.

She is a former staff writer for The New Yorker, and her fiction and nonfiction writing has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine and The New York Times Book Review. She lives with her husband and two children in Turin, Italy (2006).

Reviews

[Ruben · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have conflicting feelings about this short story collection. On the hand there is some the best writing I read all year. The descriptions and observations on Northern-Italian culture and life are stellar. On the other hand the characters are so unlikeable and their worldview so narrow and sarcastic that it became a real nuisance as one story followed the next on the same theme.

The titular 'interesting women' feature in almost all of the stories: they are relatively young, highly educated, pretty American expats, usually in Italy, always divorced or single (which is always the fault of horrible men), and with a sarcastic worldview. Their relations with other women are generally fake and the only thing that really counts is their daughter (if they have one).

The men are, without exception, adulterous idiots. Often boring, usually just dumb. Not one of them says a single intelligent word in the entire book. The Italian men are particularly superficial; essentially big, horny, racist kids. If these women are so much smarter, surely at least they can choose better?

I don't care whether this reflects Andrea Lee's worldview or not, but there was little to enjoy, no matter how good the writing.

There was one story that stood out positively for me: The Golden Chariot, about an African-American family going on a road trip in 1960s America.

Many thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for an advance e-copy.

[Rose · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book should be called "Interesting [Sex Lives of] Women," or, better, "Interesting [One-Time Sexual Choices Made By Rather Unrelatable] Women." I read the first story and, I admit, just skimmed the rest. In the first story, a woman hires two call girls for her husband, and.... nothing. This book really doesn't explore much of what happened after that, although it does try to explain why she might have made the decision. Then, while she's arranged to have the house to herself--kids gone, husband sleeping with beautiful strangers-- she... does nothing. She goes to bed early, and lies there. And that, my friends, is about as much insight into this choice as we get from the narrator or the author. Maybe this would be more satisfying to someone with a voyageur-type mindset, but for those wanting either plot or character development, I didn't find either. (Maybe if I'd paid more attention to the rest of the stories, I wouldn't have been so disappointed.)

[Dolly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book that is full of engaging stories, all in a similar vein with common themes, but quite different from one another in the scope and emotions of the story.

I liked it overall, but I was frustrated at the sheer number of "50 cent" words that I had to look up. There were at least 20 words that I'd never even heard of before and I consider myself well read. I hate to use the word pretentious, but there are many times that a more familiar word would have worked just fine. No need to show off. Quondam, matutinal, seigneurial and callipygian are just a few...

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Until I read a review online somewhere that referred to this book as Sex in the City set in Italy, I quite liked it. The author brings us to some truly exotic situations. The lead-off story is about a woman who buys two Brazilian prostitutes for her husband on his birthday. There's another about an American in a showdown of social mores with poor Africans. However, as you churn through all ten or so stories, you'll be wearied by the sameness: Every protagonist is black, Harvard-educated, proud and dismissive of men. The women start out interesting, but end up quite dull.

[Laurel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very thinly veiled stories from the author's life, but Lee has the advantage of those stories being about living in Milan married to a rich Italian and having rich American men try to seduce her with flights to New York City and rejecting them by saying, I write for the New Yorker, I can fly there whenever I want. Suckas.

The title story has added the term 'interesting woman' to my lexicon, which I only now realize I'd been needing forever.

[Ivana · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a little pleasure. Discovered this book via New Yorker's fiction podcast; it was Gary Shteynghart's pick. "Brothers and Sisters of the World" is positively one of the best stories I have ever read.

[Whitney Teal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Andrea Lee's intelligence, style and sheer genius at crafting fluid and insightful prose guarantees that this book is a great read. It doesn't stop the collection from being a bit repetitive at times (what others have said about all the characters being beautiful American women dealing with rich Italian men is true) and seeming to lack depth at other times. The women aren't so much interesting as they are snobbish, bored and introspective, seeming to live entirely in their heads, completely removed from the actual action of the stories.

While all of the stories feature Lee's signature literary grace (I can't say enough how much I enjoy how she writes, even when I don't always love the people/situations she's writing about), there are some that really standout. If you find yourself a little unmotivated to finish midway through, be sure to read Un Petit d'un Petit and The Golden Chariot. The Pulpit and The Visit are also great.

[Martinxo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Race, sex, class, Lee is a fine writer and this is a very enjoyable collection of short stories, almost all of them great!

Looking forward to reading more of her work.

[Brie Alsip · Rating 1 out of 5]

perhaps the most telling detail about how well I enjoyed this book is how long it took me to read its 238 pages. for a group of short stories, I couldn’t tell you any differences amongst the characters in each of them — not even a vaguely euro-coded name!

these women are simply…not interesting. they are all cut from similar cloths and their journeys, while all kinda sorta different, don’t have any substance to them aside from trying to paint a lavish life that’s hollow inside while sprinkling in some good GRE words in the mix.

one good thing this book has is one line — two if you’re lucky and not terribly picky! — in each chapter that is beautifully written without sounding overly pretentious. there’s definitely still some “I’m 14 and this is deep” vibes to some of these lines, but we won’t let that take away the only silver lining I can find to this book.

each story in this collection felt like it was trying to make some grand point that it never guided the reader to. the setup was there for a great revelation to be made, but the payoff never came. a real mirror to how I was set up to think I’d like this book and that turnaround never happened!

overall, if it takes over half a year to finish a book and you have to google more than 3 words in it, it’s probably not going to become a good book after the 4th vocab word googled.

[Jamie Lindemulder · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was okay. It was a book of a bunch of short stories about "interesting women" - hence the title. The women were not really interesting in my opinion. I'm not going to tell you all about them. But most of them took place in Italy, and the woman in the story is originally from somewhere in the USA. She is married, and her spouse is cheating on her, has cheated on her, she ordered a pro$titute for him, etc. A few of the stories just seemed repetitive to me. I guess my favorite one is the family that does a road trip from the East Coast to the West Coast and it's set up as a play. If you like short stories, you should check it out. I did feel like I was reading it for weeks, it just never seemed to end. Did a quick photoshoot at the Leo Collection Boutique Hotel in Detroit, MI while I was there. Hope you enjoy :)

[Niamh]

Dnf - every story is the same (an American woman living in Italy) and felt autofictiony

[Casira · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was disappointed. I read the first short story, The Birthday Present, and found myself immediately thrown into a cliche. An impossibly rich woman who has perfected the art of being an efficient trophy wife and contented herself with having a domineering husband with occasional infidelities...is a trope I have seen a thousand times over and am endlessly tired of.

It seems like every writer has the same idea about rich women. They try to be perfect, are condescended to, thought little of, but bear it all with what (I suppose) we as readers are to think of as supreme elegance. Like there is something endlessly glamorous about a woman ordering a pair of call girls for her husband to sleep with because she knows that without an adventurous sex life their marriage means very little. (That's not a spoiler - it's in the dust jacket.)

I digress. It wasn't terrible. It was written in that flowery way that all things about rich people are written; with lots of ultimately meaningless detail about architecture and expensive furnishings. I just found myself, within the first few pages, flipping ahead to see how long the story was because I was so immediately bored with it.

In short, it wasn't very interesting.

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

The stories in this book all fall in the same general category: interesting (duh) upper-middle-class women, usually African-American, living abroad, often in Italy. It's a category I like, but since they're all so topically similar, a few of the stories (that would probably be good on their own) sink a little lower when you read them all at once. But this is always the problem with short story collections, and when I sat down to look at the story list I picked about half as my favorites. To wit:
"Brothers and Sisters Around the World" (from the New Yorker podcast that turned me on to Andrea Lee), "Interesting Women", "The Birthday Present", "The Prior's Room", "Un Petit d'un Petit", "The Pulpit", "Sicily"

[Arthur Rosenfeld · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Lee's work. I only wish there were more of it. I first heard the eponymous story on the New Yorker fiction podcast, and was drawn in. I don't believe the rest of the stories in the book are quite as strong, but it doesn't matter as the that one carries the day.

[umang · Rating 5 out of 5]

Re-read 7/2009
Re-read 7/2011. Enjoyed it a bit less this time, but it was very topical.

[Karyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I heard Ms. Lee read a story from this book on Valentine's Day, 2002. I love the whole collection.

[Keith Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting Women: Stories by Andrea Lee (2003)

[Gail · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a fantastic writer!

[lixy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great writer I'd never heard of. Really compelling short stories (which I don't normally go for!)

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

just completed "brothers & sisters around the world"...exceptional short story!

[EG · Rating 4 out of 5]

A few of the stories were a little dull or repetitive, but most were engaging and insightful. Andrea Lee is extremely erudite, and has a great writing style.

[Raquel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book because of its beautiful, crystal clear descriptive nature.

[Carrie Best · Rating 5 out of 5]

Found this one on a list of authors that have been largely forgotten. Wish she'd write more books. Refreshing new perspectives on a being a European woman and relaionships

[Amanda Cargill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Worthwhile read. Delicious little short stories that smartly capture female experience of life abroad.

[Ryo · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received a copy of this book for free in a Goodreads giveaway.

Despite the title of this short story collection, I didn't really find the women who were the protagonists of these stories to be very interesting. They were largely the same; the majority of the stories feature a Black American woman who's well-educated and lives in Italy (much like the author, I suppose). Most of them seem to have to deal with rich men they find uninteresting, and they find themselves bored of the men and other people. I found myself getting kind of bored, honestly, despite the fact that these are supposed to be separate short stories with separate plots and characters, because they felt kind of the same thing after a while, and there's not really many likable characters. Not much happens plot-wise in these, there's not really a big reveal, just a lot of introspection, which didn't really hold my interest. On the plus side, these are well-written, the prose flowery and sometimes showy with big words, and lots of descriptive text about the various locales, mostly in Italy.

[jasmaximum · Rating 1 out of 5]

Beautiful writing and choice of words which is why I give it one star. As other reviews already question: I don’t know whether the main characters worldviews reflect the authors opinions but I hope not and it is meant to be a exaggeration of the life of a foreign woman in Italy.
All the stories feel the same in a sense and feature unlikable women that feel superior to the equally unlikable local men due to their sacrifice of moving to a different country or because they even view their own cultural background as advanced in comparison.
All of this would be good representation of some foreign women if the short stories had character development which is lacking almost completely.
In most of the stories the only learning of the main character seems to be that they are indeed capable of managing life abroad. Some humbling could have added more depth to the characters and stories.

[Alisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well-written compilation of tales about, well, "Interesting Women", I guess, although "interesting" seems to imply thirty-something, probably divorced, well-educated, likely mothers living in or visiting Italy. The stories fell into the category of reading about lives I'll never live. The author uses many Italian and French phrases without translation as well as at least a handful of ten dollar words in each story. The Golden Chariot was my favorite story and, perhaps not so coincidentally, didn't have anything to do with Europe and was not focussed on or narrated by just one woman.

[Katherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mosaic of short stories with a colorful set of characters each as vibrant as the next. Travel round the world in these 14 shorts stories (one set up as a mini-play). Would make a good, light read for vacation travel as the stories are set all over the place and there is a smattering of various European languages sprinkled here and there to help set the tone of the stories. Not my usual style of book, but won it in a giveaway. An entertaining enough, light read.

[Nicolette · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not gonna lie, I’m still not sure what to rate this book. The only reason I even continued reading was because I realized the author is Black. It’s a series of short stories that don’t really seem to have a point other than highlighting themes of American women moving to Europe and “finding themselves” in some way, shape or form but the stories are surprisingly weak or maybe I just didn’t get them or maybe I just expected more given the title.

It’s an easy beach/vacation read I suppose.

[Allison Sayre · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is essentially multiple stories about how men are the epicenter of women’s lives. I would have thought it was a male author trying to write relatable stories about women. There was not one story about just women, every story was about the way in which women perceive men and how men perceive women.