You Think It, I ll Say It: Stories

Description

“Every bit as smart, sensitive, funny, and genuine as her phenomenally popular novels,”* a dazzling collection from the New York Times bestselling author of Prep, American Wife, and Eligible

“I really loved all the characters in this book. They’re so complex and interesting, and in every story, you’ll find them going through these pivotal moments in their lives.”—Reese Witherspoon (Reese’s Book Club x Hello Sunshine Book Pick)

A suburban mother of two fantasizes about the downfall of an old friend whose wholesome lifestyle empire may or may not be built on a lie. A high-powered lawyer honeymooning with her husband is caught off guard by the appearance of the girl who tormented her in high school. A shy Ivy League student learns the truth about a classmate’s seemingly enviable life.

Curtis Sittenfeld has established a reputation as a sharp chronicler of the modern age who humanizes her subjects even as she skewers them. Now, with this first collection of short fiction, her “astonishing gift for creating characters that take up residence in readers’ heads” (The Washington Post) is showcased like never before. Throughout the ten stories in You Think It, I’ll Say It, Sittenfeld upends assumptions about class, relationships, and gender roles in a nation that feels both adrift and viscerally divided.

With moving insight and uncanny precision, Curtis Sittenfeld pinpoints the questionable decisions, missed connections, and sometimes extraordinary coincidences that make up a life. Indeed, she writes what we’re all thinking—if only we could express it with the wit of a master satirist, the storytelling gifts of an old-fashioned raconteur, and the vision of an American original.

*Booklist (starred review)An Amazon Best Book of April 2018: Curtis Sittenfeld is one sharp writer, and she gets farther, faster in these intense, compressed short stories than most novelists do in the course of a book. Her characters in You Think It, I’ll Say It are middle aged and middle class. They’re “set.” They’ve got their partners; they may have kids; they’ve got their work to do. But they’re still thinking about the past, about the mean girl who tormented them in high school (“A Regular Couple”); about that random guy they slept with, or wished they had (“The Do-Over”); about the friend they betrayed with the casual ruthlessness of youth (“Vox Clamatis In Deserto”). Each story is a reckoning with the vestiges of their former selves, though those selves may be invisible behind their successful adult personas. If you love Sittenfeld’s novels, you must read these stories. If you are new to her work, You Think It, I’ll Say It will convince you that she is one of the most versatile and insightful writers in America today. —Sarah Harrison Smith, Amazon Book Review