Single, Carefree, Mellow
Written by Katherine Heiny
Narrated by Penelope Rawlins and Jennifer Woodward
3.5/5
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About this audiobook
‘Heiny's work does something magical: gives women's interior lives the gravity they so richly deserve and makes you laugh along the way’ Lena Dunham
‘Like Cheever mixed with Ephron’ New York Times
‘Simply wonderful, I savoured every page’ Guardian
Maya’s dog is dying, and she is planning to leave her boyfriend. On the whole she feels worse about the dog.
Nina thought it might be difficult to summon the moral fortitude to have an extramarital affair with a Presbyterian minister living above the garbage, but she discovers that almost anything is possible.
A teenager finds an affair with her history teacher too sealed off from the rest of her life, like the last slice of cake under a glass dome.
These women are best friends, roommates and mistresses. They tipple and titillate, fantasize and fumble, worry and wander. They make poor choices in men and children’s magicians and wise choices in what to wear to meet their lovers’ wives. None of them are single (or carefree or mellow) but all are irresistible and all too familiar.
Katherine Heiny
Katherine Heiny's fiction has been published in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Narrative,Glimmer Train, and many other places. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and children. This is her first book.
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Reviews for Single, Carefree, Mellow
70 ratings12 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5chick lit in short stories. sad, funny, true to life!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Okay, I am not a young woman, in various relationships and illicit affairs, but I did enjoy the eleven stories in this snappy, debut collection, which all deal, with these universal themes. Finding love and happiness, in the modern age. I may not agree, with all the infidelity that runs rampant here but it does make for an entertaining read, plus, one of the characters, Maya, pops up, in a few of the stories, a device, I appreciate, in my short fiction.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This collection of short stories started off strongly, and I found myself drawn into the web Heiny creates for her characters. The majority of her stories feature women and after the first couple ended, I found myself disappointed that we wouldn't get to know more about the characters. (There is one group of characters that she re-visits throughout a couple of stories in the collection, which does help sate your curiosity a bit.)
Because I devoured this book so quickly - over less than two days - I was a bit fatigued by the end. Most of the stories feature adultery in some form or another, and frankly, that got a bit old in the end. That would really be my only issue with the story set. By the end, you're thinking "really? again!" and wondering if these women have anything else to do to occupy their time.
Otherwise, this collection of stories is vibrant and poignant and at times, made me laugh out loud. I found myself tagging pages where lines were just so hilarious, I wanted to jot them down for safe-keeping: it's rare when that happens. And again, even though the stories were brilliant little nuggets, so many of the characters were so intriguing, I found myself wishing I could read more about them. I just wish they had a little more to do than cheat on each other all the time. - Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Collection of short stories. Overarching theme of adultery. Not really my cup of tea
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Smart, witty stories, narrated by women wrestling with complicated relationships.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Helped my female authors goal. Enjoyed the stories, but man -- why get married, ever?
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The stories in this collection are well written. I was unsure about the ones written in second-person, an odd narrative voice uncommon in fiction, but one that certainly puts the reader in the character's shoes, more like being the dude in Quantum Leap who becomes different people each episode, all of a sudden. But, I also found that I felt like I was reading a book about a totally different species, aliens who think so differently and who have such different expectations and standards that I could not really relate for very long to any of them. Most of the main characters find themselves in sexual relationships that make one wonder if their species as a whole is one that cannot resist engaging their sexual organs whenever they get within a few feet of a potential partner. If I related more to them otherwise, this sort of mindless sexual liberation would not have been an issue, just a theme for the stories, but it seemed for me to be a metaphor for the mindlessness with which these characters go about all the rest of their lives, too. I suppose there are people around me, even people I know, who relate perfectly to the characters in this book, and that is a fascinating and somewhat disturbing thought. In any case, while I liked this book enough to recommend it to some people, it is not a favorite.
I won my copy of this book through a Goodreads giveaway. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Short stories, all from a female perspective and almost entirely featuring women having an affair, thinking of having an affair or ending an affair. (There was one about an eight-year old's birthday party too). Beautifully written and amusing for the most part, although some were rather unpleasant. I disliked "Thoughts of a Bridesmaid" and my favourite was "Blue Heron Bridge" with the Presbyterian minister houseguest.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Perhaps the title of this short story collection is somewhat misleading. Maybe a better title would be Married, Cheating and Mellow because most of the carefree behavior is exhibited by spouses who seem to stray from their partners or at least that is the case with the most memorable stories included. I really loved the author's writing style as she quickly engages the reader into the lives of her characters in very few pages. I always judge a short story collection by whether I want to read more about the characters when the story is over and that was the case here. There is one set of characters that appear multiple times.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I usually like anthologies of short stories. I usually enjoy when they end with a purpose, with some sort of finish that shows the miniscule struggle the character went through in those few pages actually meant something.
I chose this book because it was promoted as stories of women who were "single, carefree, and mellow," living their lives with sex, family, jobs, and such getting in their way. I had envisioned plucky heroines battling typical women issues but ending up in squee-inducing romances with brash, romantic heroes.
Buyer beware, the marketing is wrong.
Heiny is an excellent writer. I will forgive her the use of second-person narration (which should be outlawed in my opinion) for the fact that her stories wove these intricate portraits of real women, women with husbands, and kids, and unrequited love, and sexual needs unmet, and general stress. Not one of the "protagonists" in any of Heiny's stories were carefree or mellow, and maybe one could appropriately be classified as single. The stories did not make me laugh or cry or want to share them with my mother or my sister. Most of them pointed out some flaw in life I too shared with the characters which made me "harumph" in solidarity.
I am not sure if Heiny's title is ironic or whether there was an overarching meaning to the stories that I missed. Each story ended abruptly with no ending that brought the topic of the story to a satisfying conclusion. Regrettably, when I got to the end then, I was unfulfilled and confused. Not necessarily good emotions when finishing a book.
If you like books with well-written prose and short narratives with realistic characters, this is for you. But if you, like me, thought it was going to be fluffy romance, you should choose something else.
*I received a copy of this novel from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.* - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5chick lit in short stories. sad, funny, true to life!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/53.5 The women in these stories seem to be reaching out for more than they presently have. Wives, mistresses, girlfriends all are not single and carefree by any means. Yet the stories rang true, I could imagine these things happening, sometimes just falling into situations and becoming consumed by them. Sasha in the first story, seemed likable if a bit clueless and Maya, who is in the most stories is very likable but I felt sorry for her boyfriend/fiancé/and then husband. ARC from publisher.