Single, Carefree, Mellow
Stories
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- 85,00 kr
Publisher Description
For the commitment-averse women in these eleven sublime laugh-out-loud stories, falling in love is never easy and always inconvenient.
“Single, Carefree, Mellow is a lot like the women who populate it: smart and sexy and a little bit ruthless.” —Entertainment Weekly
“Something like Cheever mixed with Ephron.” —The New York Times Book Review
Maya is in love with both her boyfriend and her boss. Sadie’s lover calls her as he drives to meet his wife at marriage counseling. Nina is more worried that the Presbyterian minister living above her garage will hear her kids swearing than that he will find out she’s sleeping with her running partner.
The women grapple with love amidst everything from unwelcome houseguests to disastrous birthday parties as Katherine Heiny spins a debut that is superbly accomplished and endlessly entertaining.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Dissatisfied teenagers and bored housewives, clueless boyfriends and cuckolded husbands, and 11 variations on the recurrent theme of infidelity and its fallout populate Heiny's first collection of stories. "The Dive Bar" shows a woman cajoled into having drinks with her lover's more sophisticated wife; unsurprisingly, the t te t te ends doesn't end well. "Blue Heron Bridge" finds a physique-obsessed mother consumed by an affair with an aging personal trainer. In the second-person "The Rhett Butlers," a teenager embarks on a tour of seedy hotel rooms and blah sex with her smarmy high school history teacher. A man leaves a dalliance with a woman he met on Facebook for a gal whose tweets he admires in "Cranberry Relish." Three of the offerings "Dark Matter," "Grendel's Mother," and the title story follow the romantic entanglements and discontented musings of one character through marriage to her long-time boyfriend and pregnancy. But it's hard to care about her fate when her snarky asides about life's superficialities and near-constant critique of herself (and her relationship) continue unabated, despite her changed circumstances. First printing: 50,000 copies.
