Katherine Heiny writes brilliantly about the absurdity of life in the everyday. This book is a collection of 11 short stories about driving instructors, women helping their husband’s ex-wife and being snowed in at an airport. They are wonderful stories that could each make a novel, so I was sad to leave each group of characters after such a short time.

Each story is funny, sad and loaded with memorable, quirky characters. Each character is fully realised from their quirks to their speech, which isn’t easy in so few pages nor when multiple characters are involved. I love how Heiny finds the absurd, amusing and downright weird in everything. It’s refreshing and relatable. The first story, Chicken-Flavored and Lemon Scented, is a little more devoid of humour and surprising than some of the other stories. It wasn’t one of my favourites, but there are gems along the way. Bridesmaid, Revisited involves a woman wearing a terrifically ugly bridesmaid dress for a day – from the New York subway and to work at a copier company. The story of the dress and the wedding is fascinating for being a bit mean and a bit voyeuristic. Like the rest of the stories in this collection, they give an insight into people’s lives behind closed doors, warts and all. There is the mother who is worried that her son is doing drugs – because he looks happy, for goodness’ sake – but ends up doing lines with her ex-husband on his office desk. A man is worried that his wife is about to tidy him out of her life after reading Marie Kondo and another avoids her ex-husband by getting drunk with strangers in an airport. A woman’s father eats an expensive hearing aid.

Each character is messy, petty and easily relatable even if you’ve never been in the same situation. It’s light-hearted, although there are several explorations of infidelity and its outcomes (like being forced to move things outdoors in the freezing weather). Heiny writes each scenario with a lot of detail, humour and love for each character, flawed as they may be. She is easily one of the best short story writers out there today.

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Exceptional,very funny and extremely endearing collection of short fiction. I was sorry the book can
Me to it’s end. I could listen to Katherine Heiney’s incredible narrators all day. Wonderful! ( )

A most delightful story collection to shine a light of humor and grace in fraught times. It’s impossible to choose a favorite from tales of DMV examiners, impossible elderly parents, and egocentric adulterers, but I guess I’d pick the one where a young woman, for no discernible reason, wears a bridesmaid’s gown to work. Totally delightful, highly recommended, filled with odd decisions made by people who should know better. ( )

Intelligent. Sly. Poignant.

I couldn't read this collection in one day because each story demanded thought and reflection. Standouts were the story of the woman whose father ate his $4000 hearing aid mistaking it for a cashew, and the story of a man who is afraid his Marie Kondo-ing wife shall find that he sparks no joy and discard him. Katherine Heiny's stories show the nuance in human life and interactions--the things we can and cannot say to each other--with wit and poignancy.

I made a Goodreads pledge to read 194 books this year LOL and this is the first story collection I've read this year! Follow me to see my other reviews. ( )

Each of these stories felt like a full novel, the characters and their world so fully realized in so few pages. There were laugh-out-loud moments, and times when my heart ached with recognition.

Lovers, exes, friends, parent and child–these characters are confronted with relationships that disappoint or are revealed to be something different than they expected.

A mother worries that her son is making all the mistakes she made as a teenager. A woman who is her father’s caretaker is driven crazy by his politics and demands. A wife becomes devoted to downsizing, hoping it will make her happy. A man elated by his affair learns a hard truth. A wife’s husband’s ex asks for his help in packing for a move; while the exes are comfortably lost in a haze of nostalgia, she carries the boxes outside and suffers the cold. New roommates are in lockdown; one Zooms with her employer just for companionship. Wearing a bridesmaid dress to work brings attention. Two women whose plane flights have been cancelled meet two local men.

Heiny share that the stories sprang from real-life incidents. Like a laundry-crisis that resulted in wearing a bridesmaid dress to work. Considering that even Ted Bundy took a driver’s road test. “They will forever be some of my favorite people,” she writes. That love comes through the stories.

Heiny’s imaginative powers shine in this collection. I loved every one.

Thanks to A. A. Knopf for an ARC. ( )