She Was Like That
New and Selected Stories
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A New York Times Notable Book of 2019 selection, a New York Times Editors’ Choice book, and longlisted for the Story Prize—from the bestselling, highly acclaimed National Book Award nominee, She Was Like That is a “piercing, intimate, and exquisite” (Publishers Weekly) collection of new and selected stories that capture “the joys and anxieties of motherhood” (Star Tribune, Minneapolis).
In these twelve deft, acutely funny, and often heartbreaking stories, “Walbert captures with an unusual combination of restraint and rhapsody” (The New York Times) the questions women ask themselves and the definitions assigned to them as wives, mothers, and daughters. Her characters are searchers, uneasy in one way or another. They yearn for connection.
In the riveting opening story “M&M World,” a woman is plunged into panic when she briefly loses one of her daughters at the vast and over-stimulating Times Square store. In “Slow the Heart,” a single mother tries to ease tension at the dinner table with Roses and Thorns, the game she knows the Obamas played in the White House. In “Radical Feminists,” a woman skating with her two children encounters the man who derailed her career years earlier. And in the poignant, “A Mother Is Someone Who Tells Jokes,” a mother reflects on the nursery school project that preceded her son’s autism diagnosis. This is a deeply moving, resonant collection from a writer “rightly celebrated for her ability to capture the variety and vulnerability of women’s lives with a combination of lyricism and brawn” (NPR).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This collection of 12 stories from Walbert (His Favorites) creates a taut, clever, and disturbing portrait of motherhood. Fathers, living with the family or apart, do not share their wives' disquiet. In "M&M World," a mother takes her daughters to the crowded candy-themed Times Square megastore and panics when she loses sight of her youngest girl. "Playdate" is also set in New York City. Two six-year-olds play together while their mothers chat, until one mother reads the other's list of things that make her nervous: crowds, school, shadows, playdates. "Conversation" and "The Blue Hour" feature women that feel emotionally stranded. "Do Something," "Slow the Heart," and "A Mother Is Someone Who Tells Jokes" show women whose children are dead, ill, or impaired. Memories of deceased mothers haunt the protagonists of "Paris, 1994" and "To Do." In "Radical Feminists," a mother of two runs into her long-hated sexist former boss. Set from the 1950s to the present, Walbert portrays mothers beset by worry, fear, and dissatisfaction as they try to accentuate joy in their children's lives. This is a piercing, intimate, and exquisite collection.)
