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You Have Reached Your Destination
In You Have Reached Your Destination, Marburg captures turning points in the lives of twelve disparate women. Her crisp, clear-eyed prose, infused with dark humor, reveals the inevitable collapse of pretension beneath the struggles of loneliness, death, and the all too human need to be seen. From a pre-teen attempting to understand her father’s suicide to a ninety-year-old caught in shadows of past marital abuse, the women in this collection must confront the reality that change is the only certainty and that while life may not always bring what we want, it often shows us what we need. This collection, Marburg’s finest yet, invites us to face ourselves and our own life journeys with sympathy, humor, and courage.
You Have Reached Your Destination was selected as a winner of the 2021 EastOver Prize for Fiction and has received much advanced praise.
Erin McGraw, author of Joy and 52 Other Very Short Stories, said of the collection, “The spare, elegant stories in Louise Marburg’s new book feature characters struggling to define themselves in a world that keeps confounding and contradicting them. Long-cherished ideas are examined and sometimes shattered, and lives are reshaped before our eyes. In Marburg’s world, relationships are always subject to radical change, and her characters’ destinations are unexpected, remarkable, and beautifully memorable.”
Robin Black, author of Life Drawing and If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This, said, “The best short stories soar because of their author’s wisdom, their knowledge of human nature, their ability to telegraph that knowledge in this odd, compressed form. Louise Marburg has that rare wisdom; her fiction absolutely hums with it, and yes, soars. This book is enlightening, challenging, and moving. I am so glad it is out in the world.”
R.L. Maizes, author of Other People’s Pets (winner of the Colorado Book Award) and We Love Anderson Cooper, said, “In her new collection, You Have Reached Your Destination, Louise Marburg has assembled a cast of badly behaved women I couldn’t help but adore. Hilarious, irreverent, and tender hearted, her characters inspire empathy for them and compassion for ourselves. Warning: May cause addiction to Marburg’s writing and sudden cravings for her other collections.”
Leslie Pietrzyk, author of Admit This to No One, said, “An artful collection of stories, with vibes of Edward Hopper’s New York. Exquisitely lonely, fraught with the ache of last chances, yet rendered with hope and love and humor, these stories left my heart lurching: What just flattened me? How did she do that?”
Ethel Rohan, author of In the Event of Contact, said, “You Have Reached Your Destination is a striking collection of short stories about the desires and destinations that too often elude us. What never fails, never eludes, is Marburg’s affecting depiction of the strange, painful, and wondrous.”
Mary South, author of You Will Never be Forgotten, said,“You Have Reached Your Destination is a brilliantly subtle and elegantly crafted collection about fractured families, primal wounds, and lost opportunities, resilience, forgiveness, and the vibrancy of solitary lives. I greatly admired Louise Marburg’s portrayal of women taking care of children, parents, friends, and neighbors while taking stock of their own experiences, women on the verge of regarding themselves with new excitement and tenderness.”
Marburg is the author of two previous collections of stories, The Truth About Me and No Diving Allowed. Her work has appeared in such journals as Narrative, Ploughshares, STORY, The Hudson Review, and many others. She has been supported by the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Kenyon Writing Workshops, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She lives in New York City with her husband, the artist Charles Marburg.
You Have Reached Your Destination was selected as a winner of the 2021 EastOver Prize for Fiction and has received much advanced praise.
Erin McGraw, author of Joy and 52 Other Very Short Stories, said of the collection, “The spare, elegant stories in Louise Marburg’s new book feature characters struggling to define themselves in a world that keeps confounding and contradicting them. Long-cherished ideas are examined and sometimes shattered, and lives are reshaped before our eyes. In Marburg’s world, relationships are always subject to radical change, and her characters’ destinations are unexpected, remarkable, and beautifully memorable.”
Robin Black, author of Life Drawing and If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This, said, “The best short stories soar because of their author’s wisdom, their knowledge of human nature, their ability to telegraph that knowledge in this odd, compressed form. Louise Marburg has that rare wisdom; her fiction absolutely hums with it, and yes, soars. This book is enlightening, challenging, and moving. I am so glad it is out in the world.”
R.L. Maizes, author of Other People’s Pets (winner of the Colorado Book Award) and We Love Anderson Cooper, said, “In her new collection, You Have Reached Your Destination, Louise Marburg has assembled a cast of badly behaved women I couldn’t help but adore. Hilarious, irreverent, and tender hearted, her characters inspire empathy for them and compassion for ourselves. Warning: May cause addiction to Marburg’s writing and sudden cravings for her other collections.”
Leslie Pietrzyk, author of Admit This to No One, said, “An artful collection of stories, with vibes of Edward Hopper’s New York. Exquisitely lonely, fraught with the ache of last chances, yet rendered with hope and love and humor, these stories left my heart lurching: What just flattened me? How did she do that?”
Ethel Rohan, author of In the Event of Contact, said, “You Have Reached Your Destination is a striking collection of short stories about the desires and destinations that too often elude us. What never fails, never eludes, is Marburg’s affecting depiction of the strange, painful, and wondrous.”
Mary South, author of You Will Never be Forgotten, said,“You Have Reached Your Destination is a brilliantly subtle and elegantly crafted collection about fractured families, primal wounds, and lost opportunities, resilience, forgiveness, and the vibrancy of solitary lives. I greatly admired Louise Marburg’s portrayal of women taking care of children, parents, friends, and neighbors while taking stock of their own experiences, women on the verge of regarding themselves with new excitement and tenderness.”
Marburg is the author of two previous collections of stories, The Truth About Me and No Diving Allowed. Her work has appeared in such journals as Narrative, Ploughshares, STORY, The Hudson Review, and many others. She has been supported by the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Kenyon Writing Workshops, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She lives in New York City with her husband, the artist Charles Marburg.
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
168 pages, Paperback
Published November 10, 2022
3 people are currently reading
252 people want to read
About the author
Louise Marburg
7 books9 followersLouise Marburg is the author of a collection of stories, The Truth About Me (WTAW Press, 2017), which was named by the San Francisco Chronicle and Entropy as a best book of 2017. Winner of the Independent Press Book Award for the short story, The Truth About Me was also shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Her stories have appeared in Narrative, The Pinch, Carolina Quarterly, Ploughshares, The Chicago Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. Her latest collection of stories, No Diving Allowed, is forthcoming on October 6th, 2021. She lives in New York City with her husband, the artist Charles Marburg.
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
December 16, 2022
You Have Reached Your Destination is a unique collection of short stories. This was my first by Louise Marburg and I'm already looking forward to reading more by this author. I enjoyed her writing style so much!
I enjoyed every single one of these stories but the standouts for me were:
The Weather Of Menopause
Even-Steven
Outrageous
The story I would have liked more of was June. I so badly wanted to see where it ended. I finished this book lastnight and am still thinking about these characters this morning.
Overall a very enjoyable read! If you like short stories be sure to check this out.
Thank you to Kaye Publicity for this gifted copy!
I enjoyed every single one of these stories but the standouts for me were:
The Weather Of Menopause
Even-Steven
Outrageous
The story I would have liked more of was June. I so badly wanted to see where it ended. I finished this book lastnight and am still thinking about these characters this morning.
Overall a very enjoyable read! If you like short stories be sure to check this out.
Thank you to Kaye Publicity for this gifted copy!
May 8, 2023
3.5, rounding up
September 1, 2022
Louise is an exceptional writer - it's easy to get sucked into her writing for sure! Not every story in this collection was a win for me, but I enjoyed the collection as a whole and am glad I got to read an early copy. Really beautifully written!
December 6, 2022
The women in Louise Marburg's third book of short stories are all in transit: mentally, emotionally, physically, or spiritually. A few of the women are all of the above. Some are unlovely in the process, but Marburg's skill with words and imagery keep the reader interested and entertained. The short book is a quick read, over too soon for this reader.
November 29, 2022
I'm a big fan of Louise Marburg's stories, and this collection is her best yet.
I’m a big fan of Louise Marburg’s stories, and this is the best of her collections so far. The tone is funny, direct, opinionated; but also vulnerable and anxious. All these stories show us what it’s like to inhabit a female body, a body that’s always playing tricks on us, how women sometimes have to manipulate a situation to get treated the way they want. And how being a woman is different from being a man. For instance, I love these lines that were quoted in the Washington Post Review: “We were both in our early forties, and neither of us had been married, which made me a spinster and him a catch.”
We've got the whole age range, from preadolescent to nonogenarian. We've got midlife crises and the havoc wreaked by menopause. What strikes me the most about the links that go through these pieces are the secrets and lies and, above all, the way these women often are not believed. The way they are even sometimes gas-lit. A corollary to their not being believed is that they often lie. They have to tell lies, sometimes, to be taken seriously.
There's also an interesting thread of "woo woo," with an edge of skepticism thrown in. The psychics purport to tell the truth, but of course not everyone believes them. Just as many of the women in these stories are not believed. Just as many women in real life are not believed. But the stories are not preachy at all; you’re not trying to make a point. After all, nothing is more tiresome in fiction than preachiness.
The stories, of course, all have the thread of death. "You have reached your destination" implies our FINAL destination. But it's more than that. When the GPS says that line to Amelia, it's kind of a reality check. Here you are, it says. "You couldn't avoid ending up here, no matter how hard you tried. Now deal with it."
I’m a big fan of Louise Marburg’s stories, and this is the best of her collections so far. The tone is funny, direct, opinionated; but also vulnerable and anxious. All these stories show us what it’s like to inhabit a female body, a body that’s always playing tricks on us, how women sometimes have to manipulate a situation to get treated the way they want. And how being a woman is different from being a man. For instance, I love these lines that were quoted in the Washington Post Review: “We were both in our early forties, and neither of us had been married, which made me a spinster and him a catch.”
We've got the whole age range, from preadolescent to nonogenarian. We've got midlife crises and the havoc wreaked by menopause. What strikes me the most about the links that go through these pieces are the secrets and lies and, above all, the way these women often are not believed. The way they are even sometimes gas-lit. A corollary to their not being believed is that they often lie. They have to tell lies, sometimes, to be taken seriously.
There's also an interesting thread of "woo woo," with an edge of skepticism thrown in. The psychics purport to tell the truth, but of course not everyone believes them. Just as many of the women in these stories are not believed. Just as many women in real life are not believed. But the stories are not preachy at all; you’re not trying to make a point. After all, nothing is more tiresome in fiction than preachiness.
The stories, of course, all have the thread of death. "You have reached your destination" implies our FINAL destination. But it's more than that. When the GPS says that line to Amelia, it's kind of a reality check. Here you are, it says. "You couldn't avoid ending up here, no matter how hard you tried. Now deal with it."
December 1, 2022
You Have Reached Your Destination is a marvelous, piercing, exhilarating collection of stories from Louise Marburg, whose writing I love. Her characters feel so particular in their hopes, craftiness, bewilderment, desolation, snarkiness, and moments of grace, and every one of these stories feels like an earthquake. And then I immediately want to start the next one. No matter how badly the characters behave (towards themselves and each other), they wind up earning our affection, sometimes sympathy, sometimes agonized recognition.
There's so much packed into each graceful story. Each one gives us a look into the rooms beyond the events of the stories, allowing us to imagine the characters’ entire lives with their siblings, parents or stepparents, friends and enemies and fortunetellers, the drinking and cruelty and kindness and deliberate or inadvertent adventures.
There's so much packed into each graceful story. Each one gives us a look into the rooms beyond the events of the stories, allowing us to imagine the characters’ entire lives with their siblings, parents or stepparents, friends and enemies and fortunetellers, the drinking and cruelty and kindness and deliberate or inadvertent adventures.
January 7, 2023
Marburg is a master of the turn, the moment of subtle shifting awareness, sometimes in a character, but more in us, the readers. These women are bound by legacies of loss and fractured lives, especially the loss of parents. One father leaves a note before committing suicide: love us not enough. Marburg's stories see that clearly, yet some of her characters still strive to connect, as in Even- Steven, my favorite, and others devastatingly turn away from connection, away from the possibility of breaking the narcissism of their upper middle class lives, as in The Weather of Menopause. Marburg is an astute observer of the way we live, and her stories as sharp on the tongue an ice cold gin and tonic, reminiscent of Edith Pearlman's best.
September 7, 2023
I’m usually nearly impossible to please when it comes to short stories. They are difficult to do well but all 12 in this collection were a hit for me. Every protagonist was slightly quirky and wasn’t quite fitting into the life they were living. Most were middle aged and disappointed in how life ended up. Each was striving for something but wasn’t certain of how to get there. They often carried baggage from estranged relationships that stunted their personal or professional goals. Even when they thought they broke away from their family of origin, some drama would pull them back in.
November 27, 2022
In her third collection, Marburg delights with stories of 12 relatable yet unique women wrestling with the challenges inherent in life: loss, aging, death, longing, and family. Her prose is vibrant and sharp, her characters real and compelling, and in her signature style, Marburg weaves humor and compassion through these women's desperate struggles. Highly recommend!
June 11, 2023
The majority of these women were insufferable (sorry). Katie from Love is Not Enough, June from June and Lydia from Outrageous redeemed this book. I enjoyed the messages in some of the stories, but not all. 3.5 stars rounded up to 4.
June 12, 2023
Marburg is a master storyteller, lifting you out of the ordinary world and racing you along with her vivid, quirky, and memorable characters. Read this book, and then check out her previous short story collections!
December 26, 2022
NPR reco. Not the most compelling modern stories I’ve read, but some of the stories are poignant and the narration rich
January 20, 2023
A fast (but beautiful!) collection of stories. I could’ve lived in each of these worlds for even longer.
February 24, 2023
Most of these stories were a little too unfinished for me. Obviously there were some I liked more than others and did love that they were all written from a female perspective.
April 26, 2023
Definitely a way to make you feel better about any dysfunction in your personal family. Very moving stories, not what I was expecting, but interesting writing, nevertheless
June 1, 2023
Read this on the recommendation of a friend. Excellent recommendation!
March 23, 2024
I am shocked that this book was published so recently- a lot of it felt very dated to me. I appreciated her style though!
Read
November 11, 2024DNF-- I simply did not vibe and perpetually forgot to take it off my current list
Read
March 2, 2025Short story book from sara h. All
Of the stories ended in ways you didn’t expect. It was good!
Of the stories ended in ways you didn’t expect. It was good!
August 18, 2025
Nothing special.
July 5, 2023
Twelve memorable short stories. Characters, as the reviewer Brenda Peynado describes, “ that are a little out of step but who traffic in hope.” Loved them all but the title story was my favorite. Thank you Louise Marburg. You are great.
February 1, 2023
3.5 stars
I guess I don’t understand short stories. It seems that just when you start to get into them, they’re over. And the stories in this collection don’t have endings, they just stop.
Every single story was the seed of a fascinating glimpse into a woman’s life (except for Love Is Not Enough, I didn’t care for that one): they have interesting characters, even when they are not particularly likable; the situations are relatable (mostly); and the writing just flows. Until it abruptly ends. I would have liked to have had a novel, or several, about the people and places of these stories.
The short story seems to be Ms Marburg’s milieu, and I would like to read one of her other collections. Perhaps I’ll learn to accept full stops!
I guess I don’t understand short stories. It seems that just when you start to get into them, they’re over. And the stories in this collection don’t have endings, they just stop.
Every single story was the seed of a fascinating glimpse into a woman’s life (except for Love Is Not Enough, I didn’t care for that one): they have interesting characters, even when they are not particularly likable; the situations are relatable (mostly); and the writing just flows. Until it abruptly ends. I would have liked to have had a novel, or several, about the people and places of these stories.
The short story seems to be Ms Marburg’s milieu, and I would like to read one of her other collections. Perhaps I’ll learn to accept full stops!
May 2, 2023
I am typically a nonfiction reader, but Marburg's characters are so intriguing and ultimately...human...that I just couldn't put this collection down. The book exists in a timeless space - with some stories seeming to emerge from a Carver-esque age and others completely engaging our modern predicament. Regardless of the setting, it is the wry, smart, vulnerability of the characters that hold the readers attention throughout.
April 25, 2023
Louise Marburg’s stories are funny, brilliant, and insightful. I loved every one of these gems. She is truly gifted and entertaining. I’ve loved every one of her three collections and cannot wait for the next!
November 13, 2022
Love this book so much I published a review
On The Masters Review
https://mastersreview.com/november-bo...
On The Masters Review
https://mastersreview.com/november-bo...
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews