Easy for You
Stories
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
In this debut collection, Shannan Rouss delivers ten sharply etched stories set against the endless freeways and twinkling lights of Los Angeles. Each one provides a momentary glimpse into the lives of the inhabitants of this sprawling space where lines and lives intersect.
We are introduced to the world of a millionaire who plays host to his ex-lover's wedding, a young bulimic woman whose relationship with a chef crumbles over a truffle, a Laurel Canyon housewife whose only confidante is the daughter of her Russian maid, and other stories from the City of Angels.
Filled with heartbreak and humor, Easy for You depicts the universal desire to find something true, and the lengths people will go to connect.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This debut collection of L.A. stories concentrates its efforts, overwhelmingly, on the mostly failing love lives of its mostly female first-person protagonists. At its best, the stories are bittersweet, but Rouss often veers into clich and melodrama. Die Meant Enough is an unflinching description of life as the new girlfriend of a divorcing man, and is threaded with humor and messiness reminiscent of Lorrie Moore. Swans by the Hour delivers a heartfelt narrative about a man who hosts his ex-girlfriend s wedding. Despite some phoned-in bits (the awkward toast; a tedious description of the narrator s fabulous home), it beautifully illustrates regret and desperation. But Rouss s well-crafted prose cannot save her from the cartoonishness of many of her story s characters. Beverly Hills Adjacent features a stock grumpy old man, a hapless, repressed racist whose new neighbors are savvy, very kind Iranian-Americans. Frequently, there are pregnancies ( Dog People, Last Ice Age, Easy for You ) and the ambivalence the protagonists feel about them, as well as marriages and the ambivalence the characters feel about them. The prose can be quite good, but Rouss s thin, one-note L.A. gets tiresome.
