Short but sweet
A captivating look at the games people play
Short stories can be frustrating to read. Just as you’re getting interested in a character or immersed in a plot, it all ends and you have to start afresh. But a really well-crafted short story is a joy to read. It can capture a feeling or a moment, some small everyday thing, and make you look at the world a little differently.
Katherine Heiny’s short stories do exactly that. This collection contains 11 quietly witty tales about ordinary people, and each one is so perfectly observed and elegantly told that I found it difficult to read them at the gentle pace they deserve and ended up binge reading.
These are tender, insightful and bittersweet stories about love, family and friendship. Some are poignant, like the tale of a daughter coming home to care for her elderly, difficult, maddening, very deaf father who has eaten his expensive hearing aid because he mistook it for a cashew nut. Others are dryly funny. Charlene is forced to help her husband’s ex-wife move house and finds that it’s payback time. Mia fears her teenage son Gordy might be tempted by drugs, but it turns out that she is the one behaving like a teenager. William’s wife is decluttering their family home Marie Kondo-style and he may be the next thing that doesn’t spark joy. There is a story about surviving pandemic lockdown. And a tale about a woman who makes the error of wearing her bridesmaid’s dress to her office job, even though it reminds her of past mistakes she has made.
Each story is short, but it is also quirky and fun, heartfelt and honest. At times, a single sentence will sum up exactly how you feel about something. Your heart will
ache or you will laugh out loud.
For those who have never read any of Katherine Heiny’s work, these stories are a great route in. And fans of this understated but reliably brilliant author aren’t going to be disappointed.