Games and Rituals
Stories
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3.5 • 4 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
AN OPRAH DAILY BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • The beloved author of Early Morning Riser brings us glittering stories of love—friendships formed at the airport bar, ex-husbands with benefits, mothers of suspiciously sweet teenagers, ill-advised trysts—in all its forms, both ridiculous and sublime.
"Parts of my heart are still scattered throughout these perfectly rendered tales.” —Lisa Jewell, #1 New York Times best-selling author of Then She Was Gone
The games and rituals performed by Katherine Heiny’s characters range from mischievous to tender: In “Bridesmaid, Revisited,” Marlee, suffering from a laundry and life crisis, wears a massive bridesmaid’s dress to work. In “Twist and Shout,” Erica’s elderly father mistakes his four-thousand-dollar hearing aid for a cashew and eats it. In “Turn Back, Turn Back,” a bedtime story coupled with a receipt for a Starbucks babyccino reveal a struggling actor’s deception. And in “561,” Charlene pays the true price of infidelity and is forced to help her husband’s ex-wife move out of the family home. (“It’s like you’re North Korea and South Korea . . . But would North Korea help South Korea move?”)
Katherine Heiny, one of our most celebrated writers, our bard of waking up in the wrong bed, wearing the wrong shoes, running late for the wrong job, but loved by the right people, has delivered a collection of glorious humour and immense kindness.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Heiny's funny and touching collection (after Early Morning Riser) finds drama and disruption in the everyday. "Chicken-Flavored and Lemon-Scented" follows a DMV driving examiner who crushes on a coworker, then makes a shocking choice after she's rejected. In "Turn Back, Turn Back," a woman's delicate balancing of her career, motherhood, and her marriage is undone by a strange charge on her credit card. The clever title story, broken down into vignettes, centers on a young woman who makes up games to play with her friends and boyfriend. One, "The Relationship Game," involves people-watching on the subway and speculating about the lives of strangers. "CobRa," an unsettling riff on the Marie Kondo craze, portrays a man's growing anxiety during his wife's enthusiastic decluttering, which prompts him to fear he no longer makes her happy and "she would give him to Goodwill." The sharp "Bridesmaid, Revisited" examines the reasons behind a woman's choice to wear an outrageous bridesmaid dress to work. There are a few misses, such as "Sky Bar," which runs on contrivances involving two women whose flights are delayed during a snowstorm and the men who pick them up. For the most part, Heiny's keen observations put a shine on these everyday comedies.
