You think it, I'll say it : stories
(Book)

Lauded as a sharp chronicler of the modern age who humanizes her subjects even as she skewers them, Curtis Sittenfeld showcases her talents in this first collection of short fiction. 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. In "The World Has Many Butterflies," married acquaintances play a strangely intimate game with devastating consequences. In "A Regular Couple," a high-powered lawyer honeymooning with her husband is caught off guard by the appearance of the girl who tormented her in high school. And in "The Prairie Wife," a suburban mother fantasizes about the downfall of an old friend whose wholesome lifestyle empire may or may not be built on a lie. With uncanny precision, Sittenfeld 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. --