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Emergency
A woman finds a photograph of her deceased mother in a compromising position on the wall of an art museum. A divorcee decamps to a place where nobody knows her name but can’t escape the watchful eye of the world she’s slipped away from. A transplant to a new city must make a choice about whom she trusts when her partner reveals a fundamental truth about himself.
For readers of explosive stories by Lauren Groff, Joy Williams, and Deborah Eisenberg, Emergency presents seven radically intimate, masterfully executed excavations of the unfreedoms of American life and the guilt that stalks those who survive them. Grappling with poverty and addiction, class ascension and sexual power, the women in these stories try to pay down the psychic debts of their old lives as they search for a new happiness they can afford.
For readers of explosive stories by Lauren Groff, Joy Williams, and Deborah Eisenberg, Emergency presents seven radically intimate, masterfully executed excavations of the unfreedoms of American life and the guilt that stalks those who survive them. Grappling with poverty and addiction, class ascension and sexual power, the women in these stories try to pay down the psychic debts of their old lives as they search for a new happiness they can afford.
208 pages, Hardcover
First published July 18, 2023
62 people are currently reading
5184 people want to read
About the author
Kathleen Alcott
13 books126 followersBorn in 1988 in Northern California, Kathleen Alcott is the author of the novels Infinite Home and The Dangers of Proximal Alphabets. Her short fiction, criticism, memoir, and food writing have appeared in outlets including The New York Times, The Guardian, The New Yorker Online, The Los Angeles Review of Books, ZYZZYVA, Tin House, The Bennington Review, and The Coffin Factory.
In 2017, her short story "Reputation Management" was shortlisted for the prestigious Sunday Times Short Story Award. Her short story "Saturation" was listed as notable by The Best American Short Fiction of 2014, and her most recent novel was a Kirkus Prize nominee.
She lives in New York City, where she has taught at Columbia University, The Center for Fiction and Catapult Fiction.
In 2017, her short story "Reputation Management" was shortlisted for the prestigious Sunday Times Short Story Award. Her short story "Saturation" was listed as notable by The Best American Short Fiction of 2014, and her most recent novel was a Kirkus Prize nominee.
She lives in New York City, where she has taught at Columbia University, The Center for Fiction and Catapult Fiction.
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December 16, 2023
While discussing her writing with The Paris Review, author Kathleen Alcott brought up the 1979 Smith College commencement address from poet Adrienne Rich where she discusses the ‘toxicity of female tokenism.’ As Alcott explains ‘that lie sits on the tongue of American capitalism—it’s not other women you need, not equality for all women. It’s the exceptionalism of you,’ and this theme seems to permeate her debut short story collection, Emergency. Across these seven brilliantly layered stories are the lives of women in reaction to their past, often having given into the belief of exceptionalism and found that the older men they married to enter a world of wealth and comfort offered no respite from the patriarchal ills they would eventually find stifling and from which they would flee. Alcott has such an intelligent and fluid prose that would make you assume it were already a celebrated classic were the stories not set in the modern world, and her writing can deftly sneak into the most vulnerable spaces in her characters as well as the reader as she makes us confront the questions of ‘who I was or how I suffered.’ Alcott’s Emergency examines the struggles to escape our former selves and atone for our pasts while also offering an intricate critique on class climbing, marriage and, ultimately, the fraught realities of women in a society where guilt and shame is doled out simply for having feelings.
‘Few of us what to believe that our pain is so common it can be treated.’
A recently diovrced woman is rumored to have passed as a teenager to hang with the boys, another finds nude photos of her mother in an art exhibit, there are musings on delinquent pasts, the loss of a friend, and plenty of guilt or recontextualizing relationships due to stories of violence or even the COVID pandemic. This is a crisp collection, and while it is a succinct seven stories each has such a vastness of insight and feeling that the collection as a whole feels so much sturdier and bulkier than most. I cannot heap enough praise on Alcott’s prose and all the subtle nuances and layers of insight she gracefully unearths with it like a shovel that can strike a murky, rocky soil and extract only gold every time. Each sentence grasps psychological investigations that pull us through these tales—frequently bumping through emotional landscapes of detachment and muted sadness—where by the end we feel we’ve experienced a whole life within the single slice of life. As she writes in Natural Light,where finding a nude photo of the character’s mother leads to a new angle on her mother’s life as well as uneasily assessing her own failed marriage, ‘your real self was mostly revealed in negotiation with the unforseen element,’ and across each of these stories we see how a new twist in life shakes the character’s whole timeline into the light for examination.
Emergency is bookended by two absolute knock-out stories, with the title story offering a collective narration on the rumors of an artist’s behavoir following her divorce, and Temporary Housing that offers a series of gut punches as a woman, having escaped an impoverished past riddled with drugs and drinking, reflects on the intensely intimate—always bordering on, but never quiet reaching erotic—friendship with a girl. Each story unlocks a dynamic portrait of their lives in context with a narrative action that is relatively brief: the first being the woman allowing teenage boys to assume she is a fellow teenager and party with them and the latter around a fight leaving the narrator with a chipped tooth after a prank potentially ruins a neighbor’s marriage. But in both, and most of these stories, we see the girl these women once were in light of the ways they have found to survive.
In Adrienne Rich’s aformentioned speech, she warns that a privileged education can tokenize a woman and contort her to the perspectives of the oppressors, shucking off the needs of women as a whole to hide in privileged lifestyles and used as an example that perpetuates patriarchy. It isn’t denying an oppressive system but believing oneself an exception to it, or as Alcott says in her interview ‘the great lie of the exceptional woman who travels in male circles.’ We see this directly in the opening story where she writes:
For believing in these myths, these characters often have to pay it down like a debt the rest of their lives.
When the women in many of these stories choose a partner, they find the financial gain to be a comfort but realize they have become a token of themselves, often berated for their feelings (or having them utterly dismissed), groomed to mature into the sort of women the older men want instead of who they are, and expected to be an accessory instead of a person. Instead of understanding themselves in context with actions, they are seeing themselves contextualized to fit the desires of others, such as the observation about Helen in the first story:
I really appreciated the collective narration in this story, told as a ‘we’ such as ‘we had stopped inquiring’ or ‘we can all agree it’s clear, that she basically believed those years were null and void, that age had not accrued.’ In a way it feels like society rationalizing and prescribing the reasoning, outside of Helen’s own inner rationality, the ways a person becomes an object for social media to write threads explaining the context what someone else’s choices ‘clearly’ mean as if they are the authority over someone else’s impulses. Helen is an artist with a massive instagram following, are these her fans, her friends, and could Helen even know the distinction? Social media plays heavily into the story Reputation Management where the narrators guilt at having erased the accusations of sexual violence of a man from the internet (her job is what the title implies) is suddenly confronted with her being the target of the day on social media after a public outburst. This extends the theme to show how everyone can suddenly become a object for society to dissect, though her being labeled ‘hot bigot’ in posts reminds us of the extra layer of sexualization that befalls women even when being insulted.
‘Sometimes you made a mistake and it feels like a blessing: lucky and funny: clear and perfect: so much purer than anything you could contrive.’
I love Alcott’s attention to language in this collection. She has an exceptional skill with syntax and there are some great passages on how our stock phrases are an insight into defining a person. But we also see how a person is more than just one aspect despite how society tends to shortcut a singular angle to define the whole of a person. In A World Without Men, for instance, we witness a lengthy marriage become reassessed during the COVID pandemic when they are staying at home together all the time. The wife finds her compass for understanding herself is lost without having others to bounce situations off of and observes that ‘rather than making her feel connected to all life, it told her that the small details of hers didn’t matter.’ All these disparate pieces of a person seem to unravel without social interaction and we see how society is oppressive but also how it can be vital to understand ourselves in the context of others. I appreciate that Alcott can make us empathize with difficult characters as well and reminds us that flaws and frustrations offer a texture to which we can better cling to the character studies and narrative.
‘He scrounged up some stained little words that we’ve all, in selfishness, used. There is only so much you can do.’
A round of applause for Alcott and Emergency is certainly in order. There is a quiet tenderness to the way she approaches her characters while still opening up their biographies to probe the most vulnerable moments of their inner-selves and a rather incisive social critique going on all the while. The tight selection of stories (some stronger than others) is also refreshing and garners a heightened focus on the prevailing themes that bind these stories together as much as the physical binding itself. Alcott is a maestro with words and these stories move in surprising ways all culminating for a brilliantly executed collection that manages to be both soft and cutting at the same time.
4.5/5
‘Few of us what to believe that our pain is so common it can be treated.’
A recently diovrced woman is rumored to have passed as a teenager to hang with the boys, another finds nude photos of her mother in an art exhibit, there are musings on delinquent pasts, the loss of a friend, and plenty of guilt or recontextualizing relationships due to stories of violence or even the COVID pandemic. This is a crisp collection, and while it is a succinct seven stories each has such a vastness of insight and feeling that the collection as a whole feels so much sturdier and bulkier than most. I cannot heap enough praise on Alcott’s prose and all the subtle nuances and layers of insight she gracefully unearths with it like a shovel that can strike a murky, rocky soil and extract only gold every time. Each sentence grasps psychological investigations that pull us through these tales—frequently bumping through emotional landscapes of detachment and muted sadness—where by the end we feel we’ve experienced a whole life within the single slice of life. As she writes in Natural Light,where finding a nude photo of the character’s mother leads to a new angle on her mother’s life as well as uneasily assessing her own failed marriage, ‘your real self was mostly revealed in negotiation with the unforseen element,’ and across each of these stories we see how a new twist in life shakes the character’s whole timeline into the light for examination.
Emergency is bookended by two absolute knock-out stories, with the title story offering a collective narration on the rumors of an artist’s behavoir following her divorce, and Temporary Housing that offers a series of gut punches as a woman, having escaped an impoverished past riddled with drugs and drinking, reflects on the intensely intimate—always bordering on, but never quiet reaching erotic—friendship with a girl. Each story unlocks a dynamic portrait of their lives in context with a narrative action that is relatively brief: the first being the woman allowing teenage boys to assume she is a fellow teenager and party with them and the latter around a fight leaving the narrator with a chipped tooth after a prank potentially ruins a neighbor’s marriage. But in both, and most of these stories, we see the girl these women once were in light of the ways they have found to survive.
‘‘Maybe we aren’t girls, surely we were never children, but we might have the talents of animals, sensing everything that wants to kill us and that we need to kill. Hills aren’t a problem, gates we can perch on, dark we can see in, and now we’re quiet by the glow of that couple’s back window.’
In Adrienne Rich’s aformentioned speech, she warns that a privileged education can tokenize a woman and contort her to the perspectives of the oppressors, shucking off the needs of women as a whole to hide in privileged lifestyles and used as an example that perpetuates patriarchy. It isn’t denying an oppressive system but believing oneself an exception to it, or as Alcott says in her interview ‘the great lie of the exceptional woman who travels in male circles.’ We see this directly in the opening story where she writes:
‘Helen still believed in a notion we had all worked to disavow, as all adults must: that to any rule, she might prove the brillant exception.’
For believing in these myths, these characters often have to pay it down like a debt the rest of their lives.
When the women in many of these stories choose a partner, they find the financial gain to be a comfort but realize they have become a token of themselves, often berated for their feelings (or having them utterly dismissed), groomed to mature into the sort of women the older men want instead of who they are, and expected to be an accessory instead of a person. Instead of understanding themselves in context with actions, they are seeing themselves contextualized to fit the desires of others, such as the observation about Helen in the first story:
‘Her age, she might have realized then, had never belonged to her: she’d been younger or older, the thing by which somebody else felt a sense of himself.’ (emphasis mine)
I really appreciated the collective narration in this story, told as a ‘we’ such as ‘we had stopped inquiring’ or ‘we can all agree it’s clear, that she basically believed those years were null and void, that age had not accrued.’ In a way it feels like society rationalizing and prescribing the reasoning, outside of Helen’s own inner rationality, the ways a person becomes an object for social media to write threads explaining the context what someone else’s choices ‘clearly’ mean as if they are the authority over someone else’s impulses. Helen is an artist with a massive instagram following, are these her fans, her friends, and could Helen even know the distinction? Social media plays heavily into the story Reputation Management where the narrators guilt at having erased the accusations of sexual violence of a man from the internet (her job is what the title implies) is suddenly confronted with her being the target of the day on social media after a public outburst. This extends the theme to show how everyone can suddenly become a object for society to dissect, though her being labeled ‘hot bigot’ in posts reminds us of the extra layer of sexualization that befalls women even when being insulted.
‘Sometimes you made a mistake and it feels like a blessing: lucky and funny: clear and perfect: so much purer than anything you could contrive.’
I love Alcott’s attention to language in this collection. She has an exceptional skill with syntax and there are some great passages on how our stock phrases are an insight into defining a person. But we also see how a person is more than just one aspect despite how society tends to shortcut a singular angle to define the whole of a person. In A World Without Men, for instance, we witness a lengthy marriage become reassessed during the COVID pandemic when they are staying at home together all the time. The wife finds her compass for understanding herself is lost without having others to bounce situations off of and observes that ‘rather than making her feel connected to all life, it told her that the small details of hers didn’t matter.’ All these disparate pieces of a person seem to unravel without social interaction and we see how society is oppressive but also how it can be vital to understand ourselves in the context of others. I appreciate that Alcott can make us empathize with difficult characters as well and reminds us that flaws and frustrations offer a texture to which we can better cling to the character studies and narrative.
‘He scrounged up some stained little words that we’ve all, in selfishness, used. There is only so much you can do.’
A round of applause for Alcott and Emergency is certainly in order. There is a quiet tenderness to the way she approaches her characters while still opening up their biographies to probe the most vulnerable moments of their inner-selves and a rather incisive social critique going on all the while. The tight selection of stories (some stronger than others) is also refreshing and garners a heightened focus on the prevailing themes that bind these stories together as much as the physical binding itself. Alcott is a maestro with words and these stories move in surprising ways all culminating for a brilliantly executed collection that manages to be both soft and cutting at the same time.
4.5/5
April 19, 2023
4.6⭐
Emergency by Kathleen Alcott is an exceptionally well-written collection of seven short stories that revolve around themes of marriage and relationships, friendship, regret, conscience and guilt, poverty and addiction, and ambition and compromise to name a few.
The title story, “Emergency” (4/5) revolves around a woman whose life post her divorce creates a ripple in her former circle of acquaintances. In “Worship” (4.5/5) we meet a woman who moves halfway across the country only to discover that there was a lot she did know about the man with whom she was about to begin a new life. A woman finds a photograph of her late mother in a compromising position on display in a museum exhibit that compels her to reflect on her own life and choices in Natural Light (5/5). “A World Without Men” (5/5) follows a couple, married for over forty years, as they are forced to take stock of their relationship while forced to shelter in place during the pandemic. In “Part of the Country” (4/5) we follow a woman who strikes out on her own as she contemplates ending her marriage. In Reputation Management (4.5/5) a young woman experiences a moral dilemma when torn between her professional commitment and personal accountability. We follow her as she is plagued by feelings of guilt and finds it increasingly difficult to remain detached when she learns of a tragedy that she feels could have been prevented. The final story in this collection, Temporary Housing (5/5), revolves around the complex feelings of nostalgia, guilt and despair our protagonist, now a successful adult, experiences as she reflects on the friends and the life she has behind.
The women in these stories are flawed and real and the situations they find themselves in are believable and relatable as are their reactions. Not all of these characters might come across as particularly likable (some will find it easy to judge them) and while we may find some of their choices questionable and express disbelief at the poor judgment they exhibit in crucial moments, the author provides enough insight to allow us to attempt to understand them and their motivations. The tone of these stories varies between reflective, melancholic and defiant with a few moments of dry humor peppered in between.
Do not mistake these stories to be easy or light reading. Despite the length of these stories, the author achieves a level of depth to these characters and the storylines that I could not believe could be possible in a short story format. Each of these stories is thought-provoking, insightful and intense. Exquisite prose, complex characters and the varied themes that are explored make for an absorbing read.
My favorite quote:
“We’re born knowing everything, which is why we wail. We begin to forget, which is how we can stop. And here’s the thing: here’s the thing: here’s the strangest, loving thing, which helps until it doesn’t, which is kind until it’s wicked: At the end of your life, you’ve forgotten the most.” (Temporary Housing)
Many thanks to W.W. Norton & Company and NetGalley for the digital review copy. All opinions expressed in this review are my own. The book is due to be released on July 18, 2023.
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Emergency by Kathleen Alcott is an exceptionally well-written collection of seven short stories that revolve around themes of marriage and relationships, friendship, regret, conscience and guilt, poverty and addiction, and ambition and compromise to name a few.
The title story, “Emergency” (4/5) revolves around a woman whose life post her divorce creates a ripple in her former circle of acquaintances. In “Worship” (4.5/5) we meet a woman who moves halfway across the country only to discover that there was a lot she did know about the man with whom she was about to begin a new life. A woman finds a photograph of her late mother in a compromising position on display in a museum exhibit that compels her to reflect on her own life and choices in Natural Light (5/5). “A World Without Men” (5/5) follows a couple, married for over forty years, as they are forced to take stock of their relationship while forced to shelter in place during the pandemic. In “Part of the Country” (4/5) we follow a woman who strikes out on her own as she contemplates ending her marriage. In Reputation Management (4.5/5) a young woman experiences a moral dilemma when torn between her professional commitment and personal accountability. We follow her as she is plagued by feelings of guilt and finds it increasingly difficult to remain detached when she learns of a tragedy that she feels could have been prevented. The final story in this collection, Temporary Housing (5/5), revolves around the complex feelings of nostalgia, guilt and despair our protagonist, now a successful adult, experiences as she reflects on the friends and the life she has behind.
The women in these stories are flawed and real and the situations they find themselves in are believable and relatable as are their reactions. Not all of these characters might come across as particularly likable (some will find it easy to judge them) and while we may find some of their choices questionable and express disbelief at the poor judgment they exhibit in crucial moments, the author provides enough insight to allow us to attempt to understand them and their motivations. The tone of these stories varies between reflective, melancholic and defiant with a few moments of dry humor peppered in between.
Do not mistake these stories to be easy or light reading. Despite the length of these stories, the author achieves a level of depth to these characters and the storylines that I could not believe could be possible in a short story format. Each of these stories is thought-provoking, insightful and intense. Exquisite prose, complex characters and the varied themes that are explored make for an absorbing read.
My favorite quote:
“We’re born knowing everything, which is why we wail. We begin to forget, which is how we can stop. And here’s the thing: here’s the thing: here’s the strangest, loving thing, which helps until it doesn’t, which is kind until it’s wicked: At the end of your life, you’ve forgotten the most.” (Temporary Housing)
Many thanks to W.W. Norton & Company and NetGalley for the digital review copy. All opinions expressed in this review are my own. The book is due to be released on July 18, 2023.
Connect with me!
My Blog
The StoryGraph
July 5, 2023
This is how you put a story collection together. Not by collating 15 or 20 stories together, even if published in magazines prior, but with a focus and a theme, limited to seven, that are sharp and devastating and written gorgeously with a surfeit of incandescent details, starring women in their own lives, haunted by themselves, their pasts, their parents, and upbringings, class, love, violence, desire, and more. Six out of the seven will stay with me in some form or another.
Thanks to W.W. Norton and Netgalley for an ARC
Thanks to W.W. Norton and Netgalley for an ARC
August 19, 2023
i’m dead at how good this book is. there are no words
August 26, 2023
A solid short story collection. It felt to me like they were all in the same vein of topics and very relatable to the times we live in today. In each story, (or in most) the narrator is at a crossroads making an important decision in their lives that can potentially change everything for them. In some instances, it could be something extremely simple, or for others something very big and obvious. Either way, the reader is left shocked or relieved.
No pun intended but you do feel some sort of "emergency" in their choices and resolutions. Each little slice of life presented to you in these beignets was an exploration of sexuality, relationships, cruelty, power, and social class. Kathlene writes such beautiful sentences within this collection. That's probably what stood out to me the most and even took some notes on how she uses prose in her storytelling.
Thank You to Netgalley for allowing me to review this book, I highly recommend it!
No pun intended but you do feel some sort of "emergency" in their choices and resolutions. Each little slice of life presented to you in these beignets was an exploration of sexuality, relationships, cruelty, power, and social class. Kathlene writes such beautiful sentences within this collection. That's probably what stood out to me the most and even took some notes on how she uses prose in her storytelling.
Thank You to Netgalley for allowing me to review this book, I highly recommend it!
September 7, 2023
Odd sentence structure, rushed jumps in time, and fragmented details scattered about made each story really difficult to become invested in
January 7, 2024
its a good collection but reminds me somewhat of the clean girl aesthetic on tiktok
May 19, 2025
Emergency by Kathleen Alcott is a collection of well-paced short stories weaved with the struggles of what women go through & the mistakes they carry out as humans. Poverty, addiction, class, coercion, & sexuality as a whole are all embedded in these stories.
I don't think I've ever read a series of short stories as well laid out as these since Clarice Lispector's compiled collection. Now, don't get me wrong; their prose is completely different. However, Alcott has a special way with words. Everything flows and is laid out to evoke something inside of you—a past experience or someone you've known.
The first story, Emergency, tells the tale of a woman going through a divorce—Helen. From the get-go, she is not a good person. She's an older woman struggling with her worth, and she comes across as very conceited. Because of this—she has sex with (presumably) a high schooler as an adult. This is to see if she is still favorable to young boys in her old age—a way to please her ego. The glimpses show her at various points in her life pre and post-marriage, and the mistakes she made. Her life with her husband, how she acquires the teenage boy she will soon take advantage of, and what comes after.
The second story, Worship, is about a man named Hannah who fears her boyfriend may abuse her. I know that's an insane way to start a paragraph, but that's what the first sentence in the story gives us. She learns about a woman who previously dated him that had called the police on him. Hannah has PTSD and often finds herself overthinking his every move. He brings up being violent growing up, the fights, the arguing. He brushes it off as "That's what you have to do when struggling." But with her he's gentle. He takes care of her, soothes her anxiety, and is easy with her. He dotes on her and loves giving her everything. Though he's a little obsessive—which stands her hair on edge. And even though she learns about his past, about the woman... he'd never do that to her, right?
The third story, Natural Light, is about a woman who finds a provocative picture of her mother in a museum, post-mortem. Our protagonist is not named, but the story shows her reminiscing about past events with her mother, and how things had been before she'd died. How could a woman like her commit suicide? How had she never noticed anything? These are our protagonist's struggles.
The fourth story, A World Without Men, is about a duo that has been performing in the same bar for 42 years. It's set during lockdown and the height of the virus. What could the female protagonist have accomplished had her male counterpart not existed? What if she weren't burdened with his incompetence and lack of care?
The fifth story, Part of The Country, is about a non-religious woman struggling under the weight of her Christian husband. She takes pills without his knowledge. He diminishes her, even often stealing her ideas to appear more intelligent in social situations. She eventually becomes pregnant, only to lose the baby, or maybe she takes something without his knowledge to induce it—the message is unclear. She doesn't want him to father her children.
The sixth story, Reputation Management, is about a woman who rethinks her entire worldview when a young man at her company commits suicide after speaking out against his rapist. The company is constantly trying to cover for the man since he was a client—and states that since it was never proven, they can keep him approved in the system.
The seventh and final story, Temporary Housing, is about a therapist and her daily life. Can you tell this one bored me? Temporary Housing was the only short story that had nothing of substance to me. It opened up with an interesting conversation between her and a client, only to delve into her menial and boring life. Also, if you read any of these paragraphs I applaud you. I hadn't meant to word-vomit, but I reviewed them as I was reading, and it got long. I apologize!
I don't think I've ever read a series of short stories as well laid out as these since Clarice Lispector's compiled collection. Now, don't get me wrong; their prose is completely different. However, Alcott has a special way with words. Everything flows and is laid out to evoke something inside of you—a past experience or someone you've known.
The first story, Emergency, tells the tale of a woman going through a divorce—Helen. From the get-go, she is not a good person. She's an older woman struggling with her worth, and she comes across as very conceited. Because of this—she has sex with (presumably) a high schooler as an adult. This is to see if she is still favorable to young boys in her old age—a way to please her ego. The glimpses show her at various points in her life pre and post-marriage, and the mistakes she made. Her life with her husband, how she acquires the teenage boy she will soon take advantage of, and what comes after.
The second story, Worship, is about a man named Hannah who fears her boyfriend may abuse her. I know that's an insane way to start a paragraph, but that's what the first sentence in the story gives us. She learns about a woman who previously dated him that had called the police on him. Hannah has PTSD and often finds herself overthinking his every move. He brings up being violent growing up, the fights, the arguing. He brushes it off as "That's what you have to do when struggling." But with her he's gentle. He takes care of her, soothes her anxiety, and is easy with her. He dotes on her and loves giving her everything. Though he's a little obsessive—which stands her hair on edge. And even though she learns about his past, about the woman... he'd never do that to her, right?
The third story, Natural Light, is about a woman who finds a provocative picture of her mother in a museum, post-mortem. Our protagonist is not named, but the story shows her reminiscing about past events with her mother, and how things had been before she'd died. How could a woman like her commit suicide? How had she never noticed anything? These are our protagonist's struggles.
The fourth story, A World Without Men, is about a duo that has been performing in the same bar for 42 years. It's set during lockdown and the height of the virus. What could the female protagonist have accomplished had her male counterpart not existed? What if she weren't burdened with his incompetence and lack of care?
The fifth story, Part of The Country, is about a non-religious woman struggling under the weight of her Christian husband. She takes pills without his knowledge. He diminishes her, even often stealing her ideas to appear more intelligent in social situations. She eventually becomes pregnant, only to lose the baby, or maybe she takes something without his knowledge to induce it—the message is unclear. She doesn't want him to father her children.
The sixth story, Reputation Management, is about a woman who rethinks her entire worldview when a young man at her company commits suicide after speaking out against his rapist. The company is constantly trying to cover for the man since he was a client—and states that since it was never proven, they can keep him approved in the system.
The seventh and final story, Temporary Housing, is about a therapist and her daily life. Can you tell this one bored me? Temporary Housing was the only short story that had nothing of substance to me. It opened up with an interesting conversation between her and a client, only to delve into her menial and boring life. Also, if you read any of these paragraphs I applaud you. I hadn't meant to word-vomit, but I reviewed them as I was reading, and it got long. I apologize!
July 15, 2023
I was trying to think what my favorite stories in this collection are and I realized that I was just naming each and every one. I am so happy to be in possession of new Alcott and so sad that I already devoured it.
February 27, 2024
Rich and terrible
October 11, 2023
time and time again i've said it... i'm a short story girlie through and through and THIS collection? it is stunning. the bookends were definitely the standout essays, but the LAST ONE... wow. the commentary on girlhood and grappling with class hit incredibly close to home. overall, these stories were both comforting and also put a knot of anxiety in my stomach.
September 28, 2023
Wow. A collection of short stories about women and what it means to be flawed. This piece is just as raw as it is romantic and relatable. It's sharp in places you wouldn't expect and tender in all the places you need. Feels like I'm being let in on a secret that I already know.
March 2, 2024
4.5 for the prose. Made me think, made me feel. I often forget short story collections but a few of these will be sticking with me
September 30, 2024
I don’t always love short stories but these were really something. This collection is dark, loving, girlish, and serious all at once.
July 4, 2024
Deeply unsettling but I wanted more and all the stories ended right when the interesting thing was about to happen. Absolutely beautiful prose.
December 17, 2023
I had high expectations for this one, but only enjoyed about half of them when all was said and done. I think one of the problems was that for me, having story after story from the first person POV of a woman describing her life and partner started to blend together for me after a while. By the end, I genuinely wasn't sure if an incident was from the current story and protagonist's life or one of the many others preceding her story.
That said, perspective aside, the sentences in here are sometimes really interesting and sometimes very untethered from the narrative, which adds to not being able to quite place which story and protagonist I was reading about.
That said, perspective aside, the sentences in here are sometimes really interesting and sometimes very untethered from the narrative, which adds to not being able to quite place which story and protagonist I was reading about.
September 24, 2023
author can write great sentences but the stories, with the exception of reputation management, were disappointingly boring, not as powerful as they are claimed to be. Very boring white feminism. Age gap marriages with issues lol…
March 22, 2024
I hate to be so mean but I really tried the give this book a chance. It was one of the least memorable books I’ve read. The stores just didn’t develop. At the end you’re left confused and feel like you wasted a book. The style was so confusing to read and was not interesting at all.
March 11, 2024
3.75 rounded up. Really good, really enjoyed
March 23, 2024
Mind-numbingly pretentious
January 8, 2024
4.5 stars, rounded up.
“Emergency” is a strong collection of stories (in particular, the first and last) about heartbreaking and heartbroken women and the men (and women) who fail to see them/see them only in ways that suit the viewers’ own vision and needs. As an examination of misogyny, including the internalized kind, and class distinctions, and the intersection between those forces, it is powerful.
As you might expect, there are no happy endings, only varieties of damage. OTOH, the prose is a pleasure. So many surprising and beautiful and insightful turns of phrase of here.
Alcott is a talent.
“Emergency” is a strong collection of stories (in particular, the first and last) about heartbreaking and heartbroken women and the men (and women) who fail to see them/see them only in ways that suit the viewers’ own vision and needs. As an examination of misogyny, including the internalized kind, and class distinctions, and the intersection between those forces, it is powerful.
As you might expect, there are no happy endings, only varieties of damage. OTOH, the prose is a pleasure. So many surprising and beautiful and insightful turns of phrase of here.
Alcott is a talent.
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November 16, 2024“I kiss her for knowing, I adore her again, she walks deep into shadow, I go deep in my body, lick my tooth where she's chipped it, she forgives us all distance, we come from the same place, we are parts of the same life.
Maybe we aren't girls, surely we were never children, but we might have the talents of animals, sensing everything that wants to kill us, and that we need to kill.”
Maybe we aren't girls, surely we were never children, but we might have the talents of animals, sensing everything that wants to kill us, and that we need to kill.”
October 9, 2023
So incredible. Can someone check on her… This book actually really upset me. Kathleen Alcott is a beast. Grateful this work exists
March 4, 2024
a collection of stories that, i imagine, will only reveal more and get even better with each re-read
March 9, 2024
This was actually really good, I wish I did not have a mind numbing headache while finishing it tho :(
May 23, 2024
new favorite writer alert
May 8, 2024
I wouldn’t say that I actually enjoyed this collection of short stories, but the writing was interesting and deep. I found myself having to re-read sentences to unpack them. Alcott has a way of telling the story with innuendo and not blunt detail. I can’t say I’ve read anything similar in style but I appreciated her unique voice.
May 14, 2023
High stakes, beautiful sentences and damaged characters on the verge of ruin; this hit the trifecta for me. Great collection.
February 26, 2025
I love the way these stories come together. The writing is beautiful and many of these sentences will stay with me forever.
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