A sparkling collection of elegantly observed short stories about relationships...
These short stories deal with relationships in the broader sense of interactions - between lovers, relatives, work colleagues and friends. The situations are sometimes predictable and often superficially absurd but Katherine Heiny injects them with small relevant details and sideways, often funny and sometimes quite sarcastic, observations which bring them to life. There's an elderly father who eats his earpiece and there's William, who simply fails to bring joy to his obsessively tidying partner.
I particularly liked Oscar and his wife, Winifred, who 'in a good mood you might describe as petite and determined, and if you were not in a good mood, you might describe her as a birdlike control freak'. That's a nice example of Heiny's writing style as well!
There's a long and respectable tradition of American short story writing and these stories and this writer show that the genre is alive and kicking.
(Games and Rituals is published by 4th Estate. Thanks to the publishers and to NetGalley for an advance copy.)
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