GIVEAWAY: 5 copies of Summer Heat: CYPRUS
A comedy of manners: short stories set around USA
21st March 2025
Show Don’t Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld, a comedy of manners: short stories set around the USA.
In this collection of 12 short stories the author explores the lives of women, through marriage and partnership, fame and female friendship.
The story with the eponymous title of the collection, which opens the book, is set in the Mid West. Students are going through their paces, many of whom are waiting to see whether they have been awarded a Peaslee scholarship. It’s all very “frat”, a well honed story. Next up is The Marriage Clock where a book on marital relations is being turned into a film. Heather is off to meet the author in Mobile, Alabama and as she is whisked off to his home and his wife, there is a flurry of flirtation – odd given the mantras the author has espoused in is book, offering various tips on the “Doctrine” like: “Do not engage in any form of self-grooming in front of your spouse that you wouldn’t perform in the boarding gate area of an airport“. Her mission is actually to persuade him that one of the couples in the film should be gay, but he staunchly refuses. And yet, the doctrine slides into her hitherto wobbly marriage and maybe even offers some change…
Another story is that of a babysitter who, during her student days, takes on a family and it works out pretty well, her employers are kind and thoughtful. A couple of decades later she is only too aware of the husband’s incredible success – modelled I am sure on the humongous and ubiquitous American household phenomenon named after a big river – and she struggles to reconcile her early days experiences with this cold-hearted entrepreneur who exploits his workers. Even the modelling of the couple relationship has echoes in real life.
Universal experiences are woven into the stories and as it says on the cover: “Sittenfeld’s genius lies in there ability to sneak complex issues into superficially low-key narratives”. She uses neat prose to plumb the depths of women’s lives, bringing to life the specifics of the female experience all around America.
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