Show Don't Tell

Reviews

Curtis Sittenfeld’s fiction is perennially inhale-able: smart, barbed, and wickedly funny. I can’t wait to read her latest collection. I look forward to being delighted and destabilized Good as Curtis Sittenfeld’s novels are (among them Prep, American Wife, Romantic Comedy), fans of hers had reason to think, upon the arrival of her first collection in 2019, that her short stories were even better. These were topical, witty, and subversively sexy stories about jealousy, desire, and domestic and professional turmoil. And now comes her latest collection, Show Don’t Tell, a hugely entertaining and formidably intelligent tour through the psyche of mostly middle-aged mothers (and a few fathers), moderately content and successful and still yearning for more. Sittenfeld’s prose has astonishing ease, and her fleet, brisk dialogue sparkles with humor and mischief Sittenfeld’s observations in her writing are always clever, and this new collection of short fiction includes a tale about the main character in Prep, who visits her boarding school decades later for an alumni reunion Curtis Sittenfeld is one of America’s best working novelists . . . expect her usual, startlingly intelligent treatment of emotions and relationships Sittenfeld zooms in on urban Midwesterners dealing with middle-aged disillusions in this witty story collection…In one sparkling comedy of manners after another, the author documents with a clear and affectionate eye how tiny prejudices and blind spots lead her protagonists astray. These stories entertain and unsettle in equal measure. [Sittenfeld's] perfectly contained stories are a joy for their realistically and mundanely fractured characters, moral ambiguities, movingly related moments, and the message that even the smallest tale offers lessons to uncover. Expand reviews