You Have a Friend in 10A: Stories

by Maggie Shipstead

From the Booker Prize nominee and New York Times bestselling author of Great Circle, a piercing, irresistible first collection of short stories exquisite in their craft and audacious in their range


A love triangle plays out over decades on a Montana dude ranch. A hurdler and a gymnast spend a single night together in the Olympic village. Mistakes and mysteries weave an intangible web around an old man's deathbed in Paris, connecting disparate destinies. On the slopes of an unfinished ski resort, a young woman searches for her vanished lover. A couple's Romanian honeymoon goes ominously awry, and, in the mesmerizing title story, a former child actress breaks with her life in a Hollywood cult.

In these and other stories, knockout after knockout, Maggie Shipstead delivers another "extraordinary" (New York Times) work of fiction and seals her reputation as a writer of "breathtaking range and skill" (Kirkus Reviews). Rich in imagination and dazzling in its shapeshifting style, You Have a Friend in 10A excavates the complexities of love, sex, and life in ways unsparing and hilarious, sharp-eyed and tender.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Audiobook, Adult, Adult Fiction

272 pages, Paperback

First published May 17, 2022

About the author

Maggie Shipstead is the New York Times-bestselling author of the novels Astonish Me and Seating Arrangements, winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize and the L.A. Times Book Prize for First Fiction. A third novel, Great Circle, will be published in May 2021. She is a graduate of Harvard and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, a former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford, and the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Her writing has appeared in many places, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the Wall Street Journal, Travel + Leisure, Departures, Condé Nast Traveler, Outside, The Best American Short Stories, and The Best American Sports Writing. In 2012 and 2018, she was a National Magazine Award finalist for fiction. She lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews

[Sujoya - theoverbookedbibliophile · Rating 4 out of 5]

Happy Publication Day! (May 17, 2022)


My rating: 3.5⭐️

“You Have a Friend in 10A” by Maggie Shipstead is a collection of ten very well-written, thought-provoking short stories.

In The Cowboy Tango, the story revolves around the complicated love triangle between the owner of a dude ranch in Montana, his female employee and his nephew. In Acknowledgements, a writer, on the cusp of the publication of his first book, sits and reflects over his experiences with writing beginning from his childhood school assignment to the unpleasant experiences he had while as a student in a writers’ program. Souterrain takes us to Paris where a man’s questions over his paternity lead to an unfortunate outcome. In Angel Lust, a successful studio executive unpacks more than he could have imagined while sorting through his late father’s belongings. In La Moretta, we meet a newly married couple on their honeymoon in Europe, a trip that does not go as planned. In the Olympic Village, two athletes indulge in a one–night stand. In the title story, You Have a Friend in 10A, a former actress on a flight reflects on her experiences with a cult-like Church and her broken marriage to a high-profile celebrity who was a member of the same. We meet a group of people on an artists’ retreat in Ireland in Lambs who witness a flock of sheep being transported for slaughter, which inspires the reflections on life and mortality.The Great Central Pacific Guano Company takes us to an island where a group of workers is stationed with their families working for a guano company while fighting the isolation, disease and discord that prevails. Backcountry focusses on a woman now married to a philandering husband reflecting on her past relationship with a married man.

I have admired Maggie Shipstead’s writing ever since I read Great Circle which was a favorite of mine last year. The ten short stories in "You Have a Friend in 10A” are wide in scope and varied in subject matter. The stories are introspective and immersive and the characters are complex and flawed, and thus very real, even if a few of them are not particularly likable. Overall, this was an interesting read and as with most short story collections, this is a mixed bag and though you may not like all the stories a few will stand out for you. My personal favorites were “The Cowboy Tango”, “Souterrain”, "La Moretta” and “You Have a Friend in 10A”.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group for a digital review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maggie Shipstead’s collection of short stories written over the last ten years deal with love, death, family and relationships. Despite the stories being short, we get to know the characters well. Each with their own flaws, none of them are perfect, some of them not very likeable but all interesting. The settings for the stories are as diverse as the charcters. My favourite features a love triangle on a horse ranch and other settings range from two athletes hooking up at the Olympics, a doomed honeymoon ending in tragedy and a washed up actress on a plane trying to refine herself. I enjoyed them all and found they made an interesting contrast to Great Circle where the author had over 600 pages to fully develop her main character.

With thanks to Penguin Random House and Netgalley for a copy to read

[Elyse Walters · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gradually these stories pulled me in….but I was never overall spellbound.
Maggie Shipstead is a gifted writer.
One of the short stories in this collection I had read years ago: “Angel Lust” ….

I’ve read every book Maggie Shipstead has published since her wonderful debut “Seating Arrangements”.

I usually think Maggie
has an incredibly fresh voice—with audacious characters that are fearless and stylish—that surprise and delight….
but these stories were a mixed bag …. a combination of breezy and gritty, edgy and sassy… somewhat engaging and entertaining….but also a little mediocre and musty.


3.5 Better than average — but I didn’t feel overly excited to be living in Maggie’s world here as much as her other books.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

After the well-deserved success of Great Circle it's not a surprise that Maggie Shipstead's publishers would want to round up a collection of her short stories and ride the trail of her shooting star a bit longer. Not to suggest that it's a star in any danger of burning out—Shipstead has earned her spot in the firmament. Nor am I being cynical about the publisher's motives. Well done, everyone; the world is never not in need of good stories.

Not all of these were winners for me; I even skipped over one that ventured into speculative fiction and just rang hollow: You Have A Friend in 10A. But on the whole, this collection read like a Fiction Master Class. Maybe even too workshop-y, too meta (Acknowledgements, about a writer on the rise recounting a disastrous MFA experience, gave me serious anxiety. There are few things more agonizing for writers than the workshop sharing of work), but still so engrossing.

I loved the flow of interpersonal, intimate relationships, the give and take that reels you into these characters' lives, their desires and weaknesses, the details small and large that create whole universes of pasts and presents in a few well-crafted pages. And then Shipstead lowers the boom, crashing through her own construction with a devastating plot twist or a bizarre circumstance turns the world upside-down. As a writer, this is the part I struggle with the most- how to deliver the knockout punch that the writer never sees coming. It happens brutally in La Moretta, even with the foreshadowing of doom. A perfect Shirley Jackson ending.

My favorite story, likely most everyone's favorite and the publishers knew it would be so they opened the collection with it, is The Cowboy Tango. Flinty and chiseled, a story the writers of Yellowstone must have taken inspiration from: cowboy country setting, whiskey-scarred characters, heartbreak at every turn. Brilliant.

Angel Lust, Souterrain and In the Olympic Village were middling lights to me. I enjoyed the discovery of the characters, the settings, being in the immediate moment with these stories, but in the end there wasn't much in the way of endings. They felt unfinished to me, red rubber balls only ¾ full of air.

The Great Central Pacific Guano Company, a story told as a collective "we" of French wives stranded on an island in the central South Pacific in the 1800s, took a turn I wasn't expecting. It's raw, sad, strange, and ultimately, fierce. Lambs, set at an artist's residency compound in remote area of Co Kerry, Ireland, gets into the heads of the artists in residence there during a potluck dinner. I recognized these characters, recognized myself and other artists in them (although these were visual, not literary). It hit close to home, as did the disappearance of those little lambs.

Maggie Shipstead ranges the world in this collection and she is equally at home on a Montana ranch as she is in a Paris arrondissement, a glass house in Malibu, on a lonely one-lane road in the Romanian countryside or in an Irish village overlooking the sea.

All in all, a solid, remarkably enjoyable collection and I am reminded why I love reading, and writing, short stories. Maggie Shipstead is a master.

[Sunny Lu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really great short story collection. Faves include: the cowboy tango, acknowledgements, the great central pacific guano company, and backcountry

[Bonnie G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is Maggie Shipstead, so you know a number of things going in. You know that the prose will be fantastic. You know that a sly sense of humor will show itself even in the most emotional, serious, gory tales. You know that it will have a beautiful and unselfconscious feminist foundation. You know that Shipstead understands the worst and the best things about people, and that characters’ actions and reactions will seem improbable until you realize that your assumptions and defenses are getting in the way, and in fact it all rings true. All these things are present even in the stories I did not like and that is the greatest strength of the collection. The greatest weakness in the collection is a fault found primarily in those stories that did not work. For short stories to shine there needs to be something that contains them and makes the story a freestanding unit. Stories can end without resolution. Most of my favorite short stories have no resolution. That said, in my experience good short stories cannot reach in a variety of barely connected directions spinning out into plotlines that are not only unresolved but so undeveloped you can’t care enough to wonder what might have happened off the page. There are short story writers I love completely but whose attempts at novel writing have, for me, been unsuccessful (Lorrie Moore comes to mind) and I think maybe Maggie Shipstead is the opposite – perhaps she ought to stick to novels because her novels are really great and the short stories are not bad, but are a very mixed bag. The story-by-story rundown:

The Cowboy Tango is a confection that I now see appeared in Best American Short Stories 2010 and which I assume will be widely anthologized for years to come. The mysteries of whom we love and whom we should love set over 15 years at a dude ranch, and the rugged individualist at the center of this western is a woman. 5-stars

Acknowledgments about a bitter pretentious author living in Brooklyn and originally from "the middle finger of Michigan" (where I happened to be as I read this) is cunning, uproariously funny, and dead on. The author is (finally) about to publish his first novel and has a lot to say about many things that occurred as he was getting to this moment, Hilarious and an all-out pleasure to read. 5-stars

Souterrain was a precipitous drop after the heights of the first two stories, I guess that pace was not sustainable. Lovely writing, intriguing story possibilities, but for me it read like a jumbled list of well-crafted summaries of major and secondary plotlines from a novel. It left me wondering both why things were included why things were not included. Perhaps I missed something. For me a 2-star.

Angel Lust was amusing. Great language. A fun look at Beverley Hills industry people, people who have walled off their past in favor of creating some sort of spontaneously generated full formed artiste. This, of course, leaves their children without foundation. Some great insights. Example, the central character is surprised when his ex-wife refers to their "family" and he realizes the had only thought of himself having wives and children, never a family other than the family in which he grew up. A very good read, but not nearly as good as it could have been. 3.5 stars

La Moretta is absolutely solid. This story of an early-1970s square peg who marries a wild child and the things that happened on their honeymoon (warning, these are not good things for the most part) also told a story of a very specific time and a place. The characters were all beautifully developed and unique and fascinating. 4-stars

In the Olympic Village was ephemeral at best. There was no there there. The stories in this collection I did not love read to me like great novel treatments. They were too uncontained to be short stories, In the Olympic Village though, I did not think worked as a story or a novel. I like the look at physicality, sex, speed, control, physical beauty - and the "what next" when your physical peak has passed. But that is not enough. 2-stars"

You Have a Friend in 10A tells the story of a former child star, with an irresponsible father (think Tatum or Drew.) Used and abused, now grown she recently fled Scientology like cult, went to rehab, and lost her child to her ex (Tom Cruise equivalent.) This felt to me like the backstory for Hadley, one of the main characters in Shipstead’s last novel, Great Circle. This was a great story until the baffling introduction of a plotline about a soldier's remains on the plane with our protagonist. Still a 3.5 star and maybe a 3.75, yeah, hell we will call it a 4-star.

Lambs is simply fully forgettable. There were a lot of the same themes and devices as in Acknowledgements, though the format was entirely different. This tells the story of a pretentious and deeply antisemitic writer/artist and the people around her at an artist residency. Lambs was loaded with potential, but once again went off in a million directions, with none of the through-lines being developed enough to intrigue. A 2.5 star

The Great Central Pacific Guano Co was, to my mind, the most traditionally structured story in the collection, though the subject matter was anything but traditional. Yes Maggie, Colonial white men suck both for their docility when challenged by equals and their brutality when surrounded by those perceived as lesser. Also, women working together instead of sitting around lamenting the status quo really can take care of business. 4-stars

Backcountry checked a lot of boxes for me. The story of a young adventurous woman who exists mostly through other people’s perceptions – or rather though her perception of other people’s perceptions. This sense of self (or lack of sense of self) leads her to make choices with regard to men based largely on a desire to prove something to herself and others. I know this woman (x100). This felt very real. But the story had a major flow issue. There was sort of an epilogue that really could and should have been linked to the rest of the story a bit more firmly. 4-stars.

That adds up to a 3.6. I will call it a 4 for GR

[Flora]

The premises for many of the stories were interesting, and the writing was good, but I did not enjoy this. Maybe because I found none of the characters likable or relatable, and some of the content was kind of unpleasant to read about. Am I owed enjoyment from fiction? Or even nonfiction for that matter. What else do I hope to get from a book? I don't think this book made me think deeply or consider something from a different perspective. I don't think it was "bad" in any way; just wasn't for me.
Glad I stuck it out for this last mic drop of a line:
"She should have understood that even a life lived properly, lived better than she was living, could bring so much grief."

[J. (Better Off Read) · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF at 40% partway through the 4th story in the collection. Somehow they were all shocking, yet super boring. I'm talking about really slow, dry plots without compelling characters coupled with themes like incest and other nasty shit. Plus, no one seemed to get their comeuppance or face any serious consequences for the fucked up stuff they're doing or fantasizing about. No character growth to speak of, and lots of misogyny. 🤮 This was not at all what I was expecting from any descriptions of this book I came across, though I've since found other reviews from readers who were similarly baffled and disgusted. It's a hard no from me on this one.

[fangirlishwandering · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really liked the cover

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite 2021 books was Maggie Shipstead’s Great Circle. When the publisher offered me her book of short stories I was glad to dive into them.

Relationships are hard. Lovers, parents, children—they send us soaring and they break our hearts. But as a character says in the title story, “My mother says it’s wrong to think we’re entitled to avoid bad feelings. She says they’re part of the price we pay for living.”

The stories represent Shipstead’s progress as a writer in process. The first story, The Cowboy Tango, to me felt most like her novel. A teenager shows up at a dude ranch looking for work. The boss falls in love with her, and after ten years makes his move. But the girl is more interested in his nephew who breezes in and out of her life.

The stories are diverse. The bitter narrator in Acknowledgements is a writer from Up North “Michigan’s bemittened middle finger” whose story will resonate with aspiring writers. A woman tries to untangle the mystery of her paternal origin. Honeymooners realize their mistake. Two athletes have a one night stand at the Olympics. A actress is haunted by her past asks to speak to a naval officer on the plane who is in charge of the remains of seaman. An artist in residence sees lambs taken for slaughter and wonder if it’s better to know or not to know one is to die. Expats working for a guano company are abandoned and a man rises to abusive power. “I’m afraid we don’t get to choose what haunts us,” a therapist notes.The last line of the last story concludes, “She should have understood that even a life lived properly, lived better than she was living, could bring so much grief.”

I enjoyed each story.

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

[Michelle]

How did the same person write The Great Circle (which had some problems but overall featured great imagery) and this set of overwritten, deluded, male-centric half-ideas?

[kittus · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would give this book like a 3.5 because while the writing itself was very nice and descriptive, so many of the things that actually occur in the short stories are appalling. Like I understand that life is messy sometimes so literature should reflect that, but when every single story in the book has a fucked up element, you start to think that maybe the author has a thing for it… Like all of the stories had “forbidden” themes like gross age gaps and even pseudo incest at one point. Almost all of the stories left a bitter taste in my mouth but I kept reading because the writing was good and I always expected there to be a story that would make it worth reading, but I was disappointed to say the least.

There was also the strange depiction of women in all of these short stories where they’re described physically and sexually, and yet none of the men are ever described in a way that is meant to appeal to the male gaze. It felt weird whenever the reader would receive an inner monologue or casual comment on whether or not a woman would be good in bed and how tight her ass was. It was just very off-putting and gross. In the first couple of stories I assumed that this depiction was social commentary, since both stories were mostly from a man’s POV, but I quickly learned that nope, the other stories were written like this too.

[Annette · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe I’m the problem and this book wasn’t written for readers like me. But I really don’t understand why contemporary fiction is so rife with trauma-is that really the most interesting thing about us as humans? Almost every story had some disturbing element to it, usually a commentary on disturbing aspects of sexuality/relationships that felt like they were there just to shock the reader. I didn’t find myself rooting for literally any character the whole time. I know that as humans we encounter trauma and that’s normal, but I just don’t find it entertaining to feel repulsed by a book. I don’t know if authors owe us “entertainment” through books, but I didn’t get that or much else from these stories.

I’m really trying to read more contemporary fiction and lean into more realism and occasional discomfort, but this was not a good time. I think I need to focus more on books that may have hard themes but at least have characters that seem redeemable, and this wasn’t it.

[Angelina · Rating 1 out of 5]

dnf at the 5th story...did not like this at all....multiple stories have like pedophilic descriptions. it honestly really disgusted me... there was one with a dad who was looking at his daughter and the description was so absurd, as in he was looking at her underwear through her dress- like wtaf, and there was another story that was very incesty, where someone literally slept with the person he thought he was related to- overall, not it... don't waste your time with these pedophilic stories.

[Joanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an interesting collection. Some of the stories pulled me in completely (The Cowboy Tango, Lambs, Backcountry) but others repelled me and I skipped over them. It was almost a relief to reach the end of the book, even though I recognized that the writing was brilliant at times.

[Myrna Suárez · Rating 2 out of 5]

Like an entire album of B sides. One day years from now someone may dust it off and think there are hidden gems here!!! but they will still be b-sides. Except the first cowboy story. That could have been a single

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

diverse short stories had mixed feelings about some of them but liked the development of relationships within these stories

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Confession time: I do not like short story collections 🫢 I’m sorry but usually there is probably a maximum of two good short stories and the rest should have been left in the drafts.

HOWEVER, if Maggie Shipstead is releasing a short story collection you can bet your bottom dollar that I’m gonna read the shit out of it because Great Circle was my jam, my conserve, my marmalade.

Naturally (because it’s Maggie Shipstead) this short story collection absolutely slapped from start to finish. From cowboys on a dude ranch, to the catacombs in Paris, to a childhood starlet escaping a cult, to a group of stranded women in the South Pacific, all the stories had diverse and unique settings and achieved a full arc (often covering decades) within a short word count, they all felt like novels in their own right.

The stories meditate on love, mortality, family and identity and take surprising turns that really keep you on your toes. You Have A Friend In 10A has the same sumptuous appreciation for a good setting that I loved in Great Circle and the familiar grit and dark humour peeking through.

My personal favourites were The Cowboy Tango, Souterrain and The Great Central Pacific Guano Company but really the whole collection is great. I couldn’t recommend this more, even for those who are short-story sceptics!

Thanks to the team at Transworld at Penguin Randomhouse for the ARC (#adgifted) - absolutely loved this one!

[Mo Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
All opinions are my own.

I liked the author's previous book (The Great Circle), but this collection of short stories just did not do it for me. I thought a lot of them were slow and a little boring, and I just couldn't get into it. Also, there's nothing I hate more than when authors show off their vocabulary unnecessarily, and that happened in several of the stories. Definite miss for me.
I would not recommend this to others.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group for the ARC!

[Hailie · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is everything i could have asked for in a short story collection, Shipstead's range is *chef's kiss* unmatched

[Cat · Rating 3 out of 5]

The short stories in this collection range vastly in subjects. Some of them caught my attention and I thoroughly enjoy how Maggie wraps up her story, usually in one short and simple sentence.
But other stories were really confusing for me, no matter how slow I would read or how many times I went back to see what I had missed, which was usually nothing. These stories would be greatly enjoyable to the correct audience, it’s just that I’m not in that group.
Maggie’s writing style is fun to read, descriptive, and except for when she’s soaring over my head, entertaining.
Sincere thanks to Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group for an ARC in exchange for my honest review. This book is now available.

[Bob Hughes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having loved Great Circle, this short story collection reminded me of the joy and wit in Shipstead's writing.

Although the stories themselves all cover quite different ground (former gymnasts having sex and lamenting their failures; a writer struggling to think of who to write in or out of their acknowledgements; a story that feels almost pseudo-spylike at times), there is a common thread of joy and humour, even if hidden under layers of sarcasm.

It was a greatly enjoyable collection, and Shipstead again proves herself to be a clever observer of people.

I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Jacqueline · Rating 2 out of 5]

TW: Violence against women

Such a disappointment. Let's get something straight. The writing was great! I really think that Maggie Shipstead is a skillful writer, and that her style keeps you intrigued and actively in the moment.

What she was writing though. Geez. It really felt like the men-writing-women trope and secrelty I hope she was trying something like that, but this (often) female perspective but overly male gaze was tiring. Guilt trips, sexual assault, impregnation of minors. Every chapter I would hope to have a different perspective and I was surprised with one even worse. When I hit 50% and it was still the same, I almost quit reading.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Other than the cringe-y “Acknowledgements”, every story in this collection was great!

[Briar Lomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this collection in a soft, puzzling way. Almost like I’d read it before in a different life. Maggie is a bit of a G I reckon - sooo good at character and tone. The stories each felt perfectly resolved, no huge “gotcha” moment which is often what I don’t like about short stories - just clever little resolutions that don’t treat you like an idiot. Liked it a lot.

[Ali · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good book of short stories

[Courtney Maum · Rating 5 out of 5]

FLAWLESS per usual! I did not want this collection to end. Maggie is a master of fiction in both short and long form-- I would read instructions on how to water a plant if they were written by Shipstead.

[Kai · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

[Laurie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good short story collection is one of life’s greatest pleasure for me. I look forward to more short stories from this author.

[Ella Dixon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some books are literally written for me. I feel the cosmic pressure of the world and I crack them open at the perfect moment. That’s how I feel about You Have a Friend in 10A. This is getting 4.5 stars rounded up to 5 because the cover is really cute and because Acknowledgements is my favorite short story I’ve read this year. I laughed so hard I snorted water out of my nose on page 53. Thanks.

The Cowboy Tango
This was a really great story that hit all the points for me. It had that secondhand embarrassment thing going on and it was working. By the end of the story I was personally mortified and wanted to learn how to ride a horse. As someone who is terrified of horses, that’s a big deal! I loved how dry this story was and the characters were morbidly hilarious even when they made wack choices. I will probably read this again because I had such a good time the first time. And I knew as soon as I read the first few pages that I would really like the whole collection.
Acknowledgements
This was the story that really did it for me. It is carrying this collection on its shoulders! For a lot of reasons.
I love stories about writers and I love MFA core and I am fascinated by autofiction, especially the very literal definition of it taken in this story, which is told through the eyes of D.M. Murphy. This guy is an absolute asswipe. He is armed with a bad attitude and dangerously close to writing it all down, attributing it to himself, and publishing it for the world to see. He’s inspired by his own disgusting fantasies to write a novel in which he uses a “worse” version of himself as the protagonist. Except that he is just writing himself as he actually is. He invents the character while in his MFA program and makes an ass of himself in front of a girl he likes. Her rejection sends him into a spiral and he writes poorly shrouded “fiction” about her being a whore. He’s like the saddest excuse of a person I’ve ever seen. And I loved it.
I’m going to tell you a related story about me and the last assignment I ever did in college. I was in a class called Love Stories taught by Lorrie Moore (author of Self-Help and Bark etc.) and we had to write short excerpts of love stories every week and read famous love stories. Someone would do a presentation on the author of that love story each week. Mine was the last week of class and I was assigned Miranda July as we read Something that needs nothing. In my presentation about July, I described her as “twee.” Moore, who was no stranger to interrupting these presentations and inserting her own personal anecdotes or facts that were on the very next slide, paused me and asked me to define the word twee. I did – I said that it’s typically used to describe women who suffuse their lives with nostalgia and delicateness. They act unaware of the impacts of their behavior but it is secretly done with intention. She asked what made Miranda July twee and I had to wrap my presentation of her in the definition of that word. So I can confidently say that Lorrie Moore didn’t know what that meant until the spring of 2021. I was delighted to read this story, which not only spends an entire page on the kinds of young writers who like Lorrie Moore (the annoying kind), but also describes her work as solipsistic and twee. I felt as though I was in the story, telling them about the time I took a class with her and that she did all the same things as D.M. Murphy’s literary-idol-cum-professor Baker, who didn’t blindly praise his work.
Souterrain
Nothing like a little French potential incest am I right! That was a joke.
I noticed that this collection had a lot to say about Jews and this is a whole Holocaust story which is crazy but it’s also a multigenerational trauma story. It’s doing a lot of heavy lifting. There is even some housekeeper drama and shocking betrayals. I loved the music in this piece because it’s telling a lot of stories at once. Really great little forbidden love story featuring the catacombs of Paris and a hot
Angel Lust
I’d heard good things about this story and it did some things right but some other things weird. I really don’t want to think about my grandparents’ sex lives but this story made me do that. I won’t ever be the same. Overall, this was one of my least favorite because I didn’t like the dad.
La Moretta
There’s always a Romanian interlude, isn’t there! And an idiot man who can’t make up his mind. The kind that actually can make up his mind (he has realized he doesn’t love her) but is too much of a coward to tell her when they can actually do something about it and won’t have to get a divorce. There was a subscriber-exclusive episode of Normal Gossip that reminded me of this story, of realizing just a little too late that the party is over and you’ve overstayed your welcome in a really expensive way.
The masks though!!! I can’t stop thinking about the masks and the way the story is told kind of through a police interview in little bits.
In the Olympic Village
Kinda horny, kinda doing the short king some favors. Love that there can be stories about infidelity that don’t end a relationship. Serving some realness that people don’t want to talk about! No judgment in it, just sayin.
You Have a Friend in 10A
Didn’t totally understand what was going on here. I think it was about Scientology? Or maybe the FLDS (which has really had a moment lately in cultcore) but it read more like Scientology with a machine that tells you about your anxiety. Here’s what I have to say about this: if you’re going to do satire about Scientology the rule of thumb is that it has to be either funnier or more descriptive than the South Park Scientology episode. And while that should be a low bar, it’s hard to accomplish. I felt like there was one sentence that I missed somewhere that would have made this story click for me but I either glossed over it or it wasn’t there/ So this story was kind of a random wash for me. Surprising since this is the titular story and the cover art. As I stated before, I love the cover art but it can’t be the only thing pulling its weight.
Lambs
Nothing like an artists’ retreat! And the reason why I’ll never do one is that you end up stuck in the wilderness with the most insufferable people imaginable. Illustrated herein. Bettina is one of the scariest people ever and she was freaking me out even with all this narrative distance.
The Great Central Pacific Guano Company
Gross in a wonderful way! Wonderful in a gross way! Really really messed up and haunting but also somehow totally plausible today. Wishing that weren’t true. This was one of my least favorites though.
Backcountry
A wonderful ending to the collection! I identified with many of the things that the narrator said in this story, but none so much as when she said it was easy to bag a mountain man by just saying “yeah, totally” until you are making out. That’s all.