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Yes, Yes, Cherries: Stories
Quirky and hilarious, yet deeply human, the stories in Yes, Yes, Cherries contain an affection for human strangeness while exploring the idea that truth tends more often to lie in the extremes and along the outer edges than it does at the center of things. Exploring the idea that truth lies in life’s extremes, the partially linked stories in Yes, Yes, Cherries follow girls and women who are outsiders and find themselves in unusual circumstances. A lonely teenage girl falls in love with an older, married neighbor. A woman attends a party at the home of her boyfriend’s ex-wife. A schoolteacher gets fired for teaching time incorrectly to grade-school students. And a young woman recovering from a breakup receives guidance from a drunk therapist. Poignant and sharply rendered, Otis’s stories seek answers to the questions of whom we love and why, how we search for love, lose it, or find it―sometimes at the last moment and in the most unlikely places. Quirky and hilarious, these stories display a knowing affection for human strangeness.
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
210 pages, Paperback
First published April 13, 2007
5 people are currently reading
164 people want to read
About the author
Mary Otis
2 books53 followersMary Otis is author of the novel Burst, which was longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize and won the 2023 Silver Medal in Literary Fiction from the Independent Book Publisher Awards. Burst was featured on PBS NewsHour and named by Good Morning America, New York Post, and Orange County Register as a Best Book of 2023. Her stories, essays, and poems have been published in Best New American Voices, Electric Literature, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Zyzzyva, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, Bennington Review, and in many literary journals and anthologies. The New York Times has said of her work, “Sadness and humor sidle up to each other, evocative of the delicate balance of melancholy and wit found in Lorrie Moore’s stories.” Her story "Unstruck" was a Distinguished Story of the Year in Best American Short Stories, and her story "Pilgrim Girl" received an Honorable Mention for the Pushcart Prize. She was a Walter Dakin Fellow and received a Getty Foundation Scholarship. Mary attended Bennington College and has taught fiction at UCLA and the UC Riverside Low-Residency MFA Program where she was a founding professor in the creative writing program.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
March 31, 2019
Author’s website: http://www.maryotis.com
Yes, Yes Cherries is a gorgeous volume of ten short stories by Mary Otis, an award-winning author and a professor of fiction in the University of California Riverside MFA program. According to her publisher’s blurb on the inside front-cover flap, “Truth lies in life’s extremes in Mary Otis’s elegantly crafted stories about women . . .” Indeed, the stories are elegant. In fact, in the conclusion of this review I describe them with equal if not greater superlatives. Where I take exception with her publisher’s praise is with its description of the stories as being about life’s extremes. What Otis achieves with these stories is less global—they’re not about every-day extremes of just any ordinary person’s life—and therefore significantly more profound as these stories are linked in two exceptional and extraordinary ways that should delight and enlighten its readers: a distinct charming-disarming literary voice and, more importantly perhaps, the connected and at times over-lapping rendering of the disordered personalities of her point-of-view and other significant characters.
Susan Sontag decried a dearth of portrayal of illness in literary fiction. Of course, some novels brilliantly display a main character’s illness. Examples of note include Parkinson’s disease suffered by Alfred Lambert in Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, bi-polar disorder suffered by Leonard Bankhead in The Marriage Plot by Jeffery Eugenides, and consumption suffered by Marantha Waters in San Miguel by T.C. Boyle. Yes, Yes Cherries equals if not surpasses these achievements by stunningly portraying disordered personalities in nine characters across ten stories. Does this disorder bear a name? I venture to say that it does: Asperger’s Syndrome. Without naming it, Otis reveals and shows her characters’ disability, often by sharing their non-sequitur thoughts with a delicate humor that reveals the challenges and tragedies they confront daily.
What is Asperger’s? According to the Autism Society of the United Kingdom: “The characteristics of Asperger syndrome vary from one person to another, but for a diagnosis to be made, a person will usually be assessed as having had persistent difficulties with social communication and social interaction; and people with Asperger syndrome see, hear and feel the world differently than other people—it is not an illness or disease and cannot be cured.” These descriptions encapsulate the characters and their lives in Yes, Yes, Cherries.
By way of example, one such character is Allison, who in “Welcome to Yosemite” is a first-grade teacher who is fired for repeatedly incorrectly teaching her students how to tell time. Allison explains to her six-year old students that time standing still is a byproduct of insomnia. As the story is told only from Allison’s point of view, the reader can only know Allison’s thoughts, and in Allison’s mind, for her principal, Mrs. Brock, this is teaching-the-telling-of-time gaffe is a bridge too far. The consequence of Allison’s transgression is, “Possibly, a pack of children would, for the rest of their lives, rush and slow to no avail.” This humorous, dismissive, interpretation of the reason for her being fired is the product of Allison’s disordered personality.
In “Stones” we meet Allison again. She has moved on from teaching first-graders and from her marriage to her no-good husband who’s taken up with their neighbor in plain view but from behind Allison’s back, given her distorted perspective. On a lunch break Allison encounters her ex, his new girlfriend, and the girlfriend’s young daughter at the library. Allison runs, tries to avoid detection, but when she is discovered outside the library, she heaves a stone at her ex. She misses her target, the stone instead hitting the young girl.
At the outset of “Stones,” Allison has landed a job as a receptionist in a company that sells gold-mine investments. “It’s been rumored that there are no gold mines. Still, clients arrive, often overweight men with worn maps in hand, the type who will drive all night for a little shot at great fortune.” It comes as a shock to Allison, but not the reader, when she shows up to work one day to find that her employer’s business has been shuttered by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Perhaps there is hope for Allison. She drives directly to the home office of her worthless therapist to explain that she cannot continue the treatment.
“Perhaps you’re not ready for this kind of work,” her therapist says.
“No, it’s not that,” Allison replies. “I lost my job today and I wanted to tell you in person.”
The therapist, who’s been drinking, persists. “But I have some new ideas for you, I thought of them today.”
Allison leaves and five minutes later, on a winding canyon road in the rain, she collides with an oncoming car. Though the cars are totaled, neither driver is seriously hurt. When the police arrive, in a rush of jumbled thinking Allison says to Officer Chalmers, “I’ve cracked my car, and I’ve tried to leave my therapist, but now I had to ask her to come get me, and I accidently threw a rock at my ex-husband’s daughter, well, possibly daughter-to-be, and we broke up not too long ago, and the company I worked for has been busted by the SEC.”
“These things happen,” says Chalmers. “And they happen all the time to everyone.” Is this a joke at Allison’s expense? No, it’s a statement about the plight of all of Mary Otis’s characters in Yes, Yes, Cherries.
The writing in Yes, Yes Cherries is beautiful. Especially considering her apt portrayal of a rare disorder, I give this important collection five stars. I favorably compare these stories to the playful and absurd fiction of Aimee Bender, to the psychologically chilling characters of Chekov, to the nuanced epiphanies of Joyce.
Five stars, hands down. Unequivocally, I highly recommend this book.
You can find this book here: https://www.amazon.com/Yes-Cherries-S...
Yes, Yes Cherries is a gorgeous volume of ten short stories by Mary Otis, an award-winning author and a professor of fiction in the University of California Riverside MFA program. According to her publisher’s blurb on the inside front-cover flap, “Truth lies in life’s extremes in Mary Otis’s elegantly crafted stories about women . . .” Indeed, the stories are elegant. In fact, in the conclusion of this review I describe them with equal if not greater superlatives. Where I take exception with her publisher’s praise is with its description of the stories as being about life’s extremes. What Otis achieves with these stories is less global—they’re not about every-day extremes of just any ordinary person’s life—and therefore significantly more profound as these stories are linked in two exceptional and extraordinary ways that should delight and enlighten its readers: a distinct charming-disarming literary voice and, more importantly perhaps, the connected and at times over-lapping rendering of the disordered personalities of her point-of-view and other significant characters.
Susan Sontag decried a dearth of portrayal of illness in literary fiction. Of course, some novels brilliantly display a main character’s illness. Examples of note include Parkinson’s disease suffered by Alfred Lambert in Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, bi-polar disorder suffered by Leonard Bankhead in The Marriage Plot by Jeffery Eugenides, and consumption suffered by Marantha Waters in San Miguel by T.C. Boyle. Yes, Yes Cherries equals if not surpasses these achievements by stunningly portraying disordered personalities in nine characters across ten stories. Does this disorder bear a name? I venture to say that it does: Asperger’s Syndrome. Without naming it, Otis reveals and shows her characters’ disability, often by sharing their non-sequitur thoughts with a delicate humor that reveals the challenges and tragedies they confront daily.
What is Asperger’s? According to the Autism Society of the United Kingdom: “The characteristics of Asperger syndrome vary from one person to another, but for a diagnosis to be made, a person will usually be assessed as having had persistent difficulties with social communication and social interaction; and people with Asperger syndrome see, hear and feel the world differently than other people—it is not an illness or disease and cannot be cured.” These descriptions encapsulate the characters and their lives in Yes, Yes, Cherries.
By way of example, one such character is Allison, who in “Welcome to Yosemite” is a first-grade teacher who is fired for repeatedly incorrectly teaching her students how to tell time. Allison explains to her six-year old students that time standing still is a byproduct of insomnia. As the story is told only from Allison’s point of view, the reader can only know Allison’s thoughts, and in Allison’s mind, for her principal, Mrs. Brock, this is teaching-the-telling-of-time gaffe is a bridge too far. The consequence of Allison’s transgression is, “Possibly, a pack of children would, for the rest of their lives, rush and slow to no avail.” This humorous, dismissive, interpretation of the reason for her being fired is the product of Allison’s disordered personality.
In “Stones” we meet Allison again. She has moved on from teaching first-graders and from her marriage to her no-good husband who’s taken up with their neighbor in plain view but from behind Allison’s back, given her distorted perspective. On a lunch break Allison encounters her ex, his new girlfriend, and the girlfriend’s young daughter at the library. Allison runs, tries to avoid detection, but when she is discovered outside the library, she heaves a stone at her ex. She misses her target, the stone instead hitting the young girl.
At the outset of “Stones,” Allison has landed a job as a receptionist in a company that sells gold-mine investments. “It’s been rumored that there are no gold mines. Still, clients arrive, often overweight men with worn maps in hand, the type who will drive all night for a little shot at great fortune.” It comes as a shock to Allison, but not the reader, when she shows up to work one day to find that her employer’s business has been shuttered by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Perhaps there is hope for Allison. She drives directly to the home office of her worthless therapist to explain that she cannot continue the treatment.
“Perhaps you’re not ready for this kind of work,” her therapist says.
“No, it’s not that,” Allison replies. “I lost my job today and I wanted to tell you in person.”
The therapist, who’s been drinking, persists. “But I have some new ideas for you, I thought of them today.”
Allison leaves and five minutes later, on a winding canyon road in the rain, she collides with an oncoming car. Though the cars are totaled, neither driver is seriously hurt. When the police arrive, in a rush of jumbled thinking Allison says to Officer Chalmers, “I’ve cracked my car, and I’ve tried to leave my therapist, but now I had to ask her to come get me, and I accidently threw a rock at my ex-husband’s daughter, well, possibly daughter-to-be, and we broke up not too long ago, and the company I worked for has been busted by the SEC.”
“These things happen,” says Chalmers. “And they happen all the time to everyone.” Is this a joke at Allison’s expense? No, it’s a statement about the plight of all of Mary Otis’s characters in Yes, Yes, Cherries.
The writing in Yes, Yes Cherries is beautiful. Especially considering her apt portrayal of a rare disorder, I give this important collection five stars. I favorably compare these stories to the playful and absurd fiction of Aimee Bender, to the psychologically chilling characters of Chekov, to the nuanced epiphanies of Joyce.
Five stars, hands down. Unequivocally, I highly recommend this book.
You can find this book here: https://www.amazon.com/Yes-Cherries-S...
May 10, 2019
I absolutely love this book. The characters are universal, and I related to the adults as well as to the children. Otis’s humor had me laughing and crying. This is a smart, funny and profound read. Just get the book.
February 15, 2022
This is a wonderful collection. Otis has a great eye for the quirky detail and a beautiful way of revealing it. It's been a while since I picked up a short story collection, but this book reminded me of what I love about them. You get to go on a little journey with a series of characters that--in not too many pages--work their way into your heart.
January 23, 2024
Not my favorite personally, some stories were interesting but I think I missed the underlying themes
June 10, 2025
A lot of these are real bangers.
August 9, 2013
I've loved everything from Tin House publishing, but for some reason, Mary Otis' short story collection: Yes, Yes, Cherries has sat on my to-be-read bookshelf for years. Prior to reading the collection, I had not heard of Mary Otis. I've had such great luck with enjoying books from Tin House, that I just scoop up what they publish without reading up on the authors or content of the books. I never quite know what I am going to get.
Yes, Yes, Cherries is a short, quick read. It's easy to finish in a few hours, even if you slow down your reading speed to absorb Otis' beautiful prose. And you should slow down!
Otis writes stories that go to dark places, often with characters either engaging in taboos or living on the fringe of society. The striking thing about her characters, is there is no judgement. I felt neutral while reading about them, as if it was a character study and I was just waiting to see how it all played out. I think this might be considered a negative if the format wasn't short story, but as the stories averaged twenty pages, I didn't need to develop empathy with the characters. It was engaging enough to see how the various scenarios conclude.
I felt like all of the stories were written to provoke the reader into their own mind game of what would you do? The characters are thrown into various immoral activities, such as the woman who has an affair with her landlord, while the landlords mentally ill wife desperately tries to befriend her or a nearly homeless woman who takes a job at a dry cleaners out of desperation only to discover that her place of employment is a front for criminal activity.
Not all of the characters in Otis' stories engage in morally questionable behavior. She also writes characters that are awkward or normal characters written into uncomfortable situations. The very first story of the collection, Pilgrim Girl, is about pre-teen with a desperate crush on her next door neighbor. The girl, Allison, interacts with both her crush and his wife in really bizarre and uncomfortable ways. I was squirming while reading the story.
Otis has an off-beat take on the world and it shines through in her writing. It keeps it interesting and all of the stories in her collection are strong. As much as I enjoy reading shorts, I would love to see how her literary voice would translate to a novel.
Please visit my blog for more reviews and thoughts.
Yes, Yes, Cherries is a short, quick read. It's easy to finish in a few hours, even if you slow down your reading speed to absorb Otis' beautiful prose. And you should slow down!
Otis writes stories that go to dark places, often with characters either engaging in taboos or living on the fringe of society. The striking thing about her characters, is there is no judgement. I felt neutral while reading about them, as if it was a character study and I was just waiting to see how it all played out. I think this might be considered a negative if the format wasn't short story, but as the stories averaged twenty pages, I didn't need to develop empathy with the characters. It was engaging enough to see how the various scenarios conclude.
I felt like all of the stories were written to provoke the reader into their own mind game of what would you do? The characters are thrown into various immoral activities, such as the woman who has an affair with her landlord, while the landlords mentally ill wife desperately tries to befriend her or a nearly homeless woman who takes a job at a dry cleaners out of desperation only to discover that her place of employment is a front for criminal activity.
Not all of the characters in Otis' stories engage in morally questionable behavior. She also writes characters that are awkward or normal characters written into uncomfortable situations. The very first story of the collection, Pilgrim Girl, is about pre-teen with a desperate crush on her next door neighbor. The girl, Allison, interacts with both her crush and his wife in really bizarre and uncomfortable ways. I was squirming while reading the story.
Otis has an off-beat take on the world and it shines through in her writing. It keeps it interesting and all of the stories in her collection are strong. As much as I enjoy reading shorts, I would love to see how her literary voice would translate to a novel.
Please visit my blog for more reviews and thoughts.
January 30, 2009
More often than not, when reading a short story collection, I have to step away between stories for an hour or more to let one settle before moving on to the next. I read this one start to finish in a little over 24 hours. There were a couple of long breaks in there, but quite a few of these I got through in multiples without coming up for air.
This means I enjoyed them, definitely. They were compulsively readable, and Otis handles her characters beautifully, letting them walk a pretty strange edge of normal at times without ever letting them step off that cliff into the truly bizarre. Her dialogue is brief and concise, and her prose is just gorgeous in places. Almost all of these stories' endings impressed me as being consistently strong - not completely out of left field, but also not obvious or delivered with a bow tied neatly on top.
The other thing my getting through these stories without having to stop for breath might mean is that they didn't strike me deeply. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; not every story has to be devastating to be good. The hard-hitting ones just tend to be the ones that stick with me a little longer.
Three of these stories follow the same main character, checking back in with her at different points in a period of a couple of years. These stories worked fine for me, but since the other stories weren't related to this woman or her life, when the second and third one about her popped up my first thought was, "why would the author use two different main characters named Allison in the same collection?" Both times, it took me a little while (and a blatant reference to some part of her life that had happened in something I'd read in an earlier story about her) for me to figure out that this was actually the same Allison. It's kind of a petty thing to note, but was a little jarring both times.
This is a very well-written batch of stories - fun, slightly quirky, and enjoyable to read.
This means I enjoyed them, definitely. They were compulsively readable, and Otis handles her characters beautifully, letting them walk a pretty strange edge of normal at times without ever letting them step off that cliff into the truly bizarre. Her dialogue is brief and concise, and her prose is just gorgeous in places. Almost all of these stories' endings impressed me as being consistently strong - not completely out of left field, but also not obvious or delivered with a bow tied neatly on top.
The other thing my getting through these stories without having to stop for breath might mean is that they didn't strike me deeply. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; not every story has to be devastating to be good. The hard-hitting ones just tend to be the ones that stick with me a little longer.
Three of these stories follow the same main character, checking back in with her at different points in a period of a couple of years. These stories worked fine for me, but since the other stories weren't related to this woman or her life, when the second and third one about her popped up my first thought was, "why would the author use two different main characters named Allison in the same collection?" Both times, it took me a little while (and a blatant reference to some part of her life that had happened in something I'd read in an earlier story about her) for me to figure out that this was actually the same Allison. It's kind of a petty thing to note, but was a little jarring both times.
This is a very well-written batch of stories - fun, slightly quirky, and enjoyable to read.
February 8, 2008
I've been pecking at this collection since I bought it last summer. Her voice is very original, but reading more than one story at a time somehow makes me like it less. Sometimes her hyper-awareness of words gets in the way of the story.
A few days later:
Okay, now that I'm into it (one story away from finishing) I have to increase my star rating to reflect my respect for Otis' talent. The stories get stronger as you go. "Straight and Narrow" and "The Next Door Girl" are particularly memorable.
Otis writes a lot about chaos and confusion, and the tone is very self-conscious. Sometimes weighed down by an over abundance of metaphors. If I may use my own, I think these stories are like chocolate-covered cherries, best savored one at a time, over time.
A few days later:
Okay, now that I'm into it (one story away from finishing) I have to increase my star rating to reflect my respect for Otis' talent. The stories get stronger as you go. "Straight and Narrow" and "The Next Door Girl" are particularly memorable.
Otis writes a lot about chaos and confusion, and the tone is very self-conscious. Sometimes weighed down by an over abundance of metaphors. If I may use my own, I think these stories are like chocolate-covered cherries, best savored one at a time, over time.
December 28, 2010
Mary Otis is fortunate enough to have a cover blurb on her book from none other than Lorrie Moore. Moore says, "Mary Otis sees things from the odd angle, which is the literary one. It makes her stories true-to-life, funny, brave, and amazing."
All of this is true. Otis's stories don't deliver the laugh-out-loud funny moments that Moore's sometimes do, but the same depth is there. Both authors share the same understanding of loneliness, awkwardness, and the perspective of the female outsider.
All of this is true. Otis's stories don't deliver the laugh-out-loud funny moments that Moore's sometimes do, but the same depth is there. Both authors share the same understanding of loneliness, awkwardness, and the perspective of the female outsider.
January 23, 2016
A perfect balance between the familiar and the unexpected. Characters you can relate to react in unusual situations, while endearingly abnormal characters live everyday lives. I love love love stories with a strong human element that still manage to keep you on the edge of your seat. Otis manages to craft these stories in a fun and funny way that just about left me breathless at the end.
September 10, 2009
I really enjoyed this book. I'm a huge fan of short stories and found this collection among the most interesting and thoughtful that I've read in a long while. Much better than Macy's "Spoiled," which I read at the same time as this one...
May 25, 2007
Nothing fantastic, but some of the stories are evocative.
March 3, 2008
Yes, yes, Mary Otis. More, more. You got me writing again. Thank you.
October 18, 2008
A lively, sure-footed collection that grew on me. Many stories along the lines of "oh isn't life quirky and sad but also inspiring" – to which I say: Yes.
May 11, 2008
I'm two stories into this book and they are both tortured, neurotic and so beautifully true. Recommended!
August 29, 2008
A really nice collection of inter-connected short stories. Awkward people experiencing awkward situations. A bit of an Anne Tyler feel. I liked it.
April 5, 2011
A solid set of short stories -- some are connected, some aren't. I liked the ones that follow the character of Allison as she bumbles her way into adulthood.
July 25, 2012
Best book I've read since Lorrie Moore came into my life. I don't usually do reviews, but if you like literary fiction anthologies, this is the the one to read in 2012.
May 28, 2013
I bought this book based solely on the title, which is brilliant. And there are a handful of so good it punches you in the gut lines. The rest is pretty average, but a fun read.
August 2, 2007
So far, this book is quirky and engaging... (more to follow!)
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews