You Think It, I’ll Say It – Curtis Sittenfeld
100-Word (or Less) Synopsis: A short-story collection tailored to the well-meaning, white liberals of the world, primarily those that live in Midwestern cities.
Expectation: A darkly comedic take on how judgmental our inner dialogue can be.
Reality: A surprisingly solid collection that easily alternates between funny and melancholy with a fair amount of hope thrown in.
Recommended For: Fans of short stories and character studies.
Why I Read It: This was on my TBR list for over two years, and I always thought the premise was intriguing.
My Take:
Short story collections have never been a go-to for me, because they always seem to end abruptly. Rather than using it as an opportunity to marinate on what happens next for the characters, I dislike the unfinished business component.
That’s why I was delighted by Curtis Sittenfeld’s enjoyable “You Think It, I’ll Say It,” as she takes the time to fill in the gaps for us by presenting many of these stories as a character looking back on a moment in their life and how it shaped where they are today.
This level of completeness, makes each of the 10 stories feel like a half-hour sitcom in an anthology series (i.e. Amazon’s “Modern Love”) that feature a similar theme – addressing the snap judgements that reside close to the surface in all of us – and applies it to different scenarios.
It’s not a very diverse collection as all the characters are middle or upper middle class white people from the Midwest, but in some ways that will help many readers see themselves more easily the stories and question how they’ve unfairly made assumptions about others. It certainly did for me.
The must reads:
Gender Studies: In 40-pages Sittenfeld expertly breaks down education elitism and the schism that has developed in the United States between the right and the left – all with dry humor and social commentary that is as accurate as it is cringeworthy.
The World Has Many Butterflies: The story that gives the collection its name, it shows how easy it is to misread a situation and how quickly we assume to know the outcome before asking a question.
A Regular Couple: Martial dynamics and compromise are explored in detail when, on their honeymoon, the bride encounters her high school nemesis.
The Prairie Wife: Who hasn’t looked back and thought “what if?” Sittenfeld flips the script in this exploration of jealousy and complacency.
This is a collection I’d quickly recommend because all the stories are good – with a few being great and only a couple that fall short.
Rating (story): 4/5 stars
Rating (narration): 3.5/5 stars
Formats: Audiobook (library loan)
Dates read: November 15 – 21, 2020
Multi-tasking: Good to go.
