Amy P. Knight

I’m fairly sure I could have spotted each of these stories as a Lisa Taddeo — which is a huge credit to her. She writes about women thinking about men, almost exclusively, or when women are dealing with each other, it’s usually to do with men. This book, like the last [Animal was part of my pandemic reading that didn’t get reviewed], has a recurring theme of self-destruction, especially in the last few stories, but really throughout. She has a way of putting things that’s wholly original, and yet so spot on that it feels intimate, so familiar.

Her women share an obsessive need for male attention and that singular focus is perhaps magnified from real life, at least in the sense that in her world, it afflicts all women, not just some (or even most?) women. But it clearly makes a point about what our culture demands of women and how that affects us, through stories that are deeply personal, character-centered, and tragic because they feel so true.