This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things
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- ¥2,200
発行者による作品情報
For fans of American Housewife and the work of Lily King, a provocative, razor-sharp, and riotously entertaining story collection exploring the dark side of family and femininity.
CONTAINS “COMORBIDITIES,” WINNER OF THE BBC SHORT STORY PRIZE
In my life, I had always been a good woman; controlling what it was that I wanted. But recently, I had started to notice my bad energy, and I began to follow it, wondering where it would take me . . .
A woman has an unexpected outburst at a corporate therapy session for working mothers. A couple find some long-overdue time to rekindle their relationship and make an ill-advised home movie. A pregnant film director plots revenge on the actress who betrayed her. An ex-wife deliberately causes conflict at her ex-husband’s wedding.
This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things illuminates the lives of malicious, subversive, and untamed women. Exploring failed sisterhood, dubious parenting, and the dark side of modern love, this powerful and funny collection exposes how society wants women to behave, and shows what happens when they refuse.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The characters in this nuanced if slight collection from Wood (The Godless Boys) are loosely connected by themes of motherhood and the tensions brought about by having children. The narrator of "A/A/A/A," separated from her husband, agrees to accompany her friend Marissa to Paris for the day, without telling her husband what she's up to. Her secrecy leads her to ruminate about the limits of a parent's obligations, prompting Marissa to respond, "We all want to leave. No one wants to stay. But they're the grand love affair in the end. The kids." In "Lesley, in Therapy," the title character cuts her maternity leave short while dealing with postpartum depression. Her nanny, an older Jamaican woman, tells Lesley she's "better off at work than wanting to dash the baby's brains out on the kitchen counter." In "Flatten the Curve," set during the Covid-19 pandemic, Deborah navigates lockdown with her family and develops a crush on her neighbor, the father of her daughter's best friend. Hints of consequential drama suffuse most of the stories, and the characters are deliciously complex, but too often the entries end abruptly. Ultimately, this one's a bit underwhelming.
