YOU KNOW YOU WANT THIS

KRISTEN ROUPENIAN

Cape, 240pp, £12.99

The reception for Kristen Roupenian’s first collection of short stories might stand as a modern morality tale in itself. ‘Cat Person’, Roupenian’s tale about the dynamics of dating in the age of #metoo, ‘went viral’ when it was published in the

New Yorker, and in the ensuing excitement the author was given a million-dollar advance for the stories which make up this book. Alas, reviewers, giddy with expectation, were less than impressed – in fact many of them were thoroughly grossed-out by Roupenian’s themes of toxic sex. Emily Gould in the

Washington Post was stern: ‘It does nobody any good, least of all the author, to pretend that the other stories in this collection are anywhere near as noteworthy or polished as “Cat Person”.’ ‘No one captivates, no one charms, no one makes the reader care in any way’

In the Times, Johanna ThomasCorr thought the stories ‘rushed and dishonest’: ‘It’s clear from reading

You Know You Want This that a decision has been taken to make sensation her brand, to go all out for how-do-i-feel-about-this virality. These are defiantly nasty tales of sadomasochism, festering flesh, necrophilia, paedophilia, mariticide, faecal vandalism and child murderers. Many are excruciatingly misjudged.’

On the website theartsdesk, Marina Vaizey was equally repelled: ‘No one captivates, no one charms, no one makes the reader care in any way. Why bother with these selfabsorbed creatures, these horrible people doing horrible things to themselves and each other?’ Laura Miller in Slate thought Roupenian just tried far too hard: ‘She has a gift for locating the monstrous in the mundane; she doesn’t need to head out into the wilds to find it.’ It was left to Lauren Holmes in the New York

Times to accentuate the positive: ‘I was really surprised by what I read – by how exciting, smart, perceptive, weird and dark this collection is.’