Review by New York Times Review
WHEN KRISTEN ROUPENIAN'S short story "Cat Person" went viral upon its publication in The New Yorker in December 2017, I was maybe the only person who didn't read it. Partly because it was the end of the semester, and partly because the prospect of an excruciatingly accurate story about dating had as much appeal as the idea of another bad date. So I had the privilege of reading all 12 stories in Roupenian's debut, "You Know You Want This," largely unaware of the singular life of "Cat Person," and free from preconceived notions or expectations. I was really surprised by what I read - by how exciting, smart, perceptive, weird and dark this collection is. The stories are stylistically consistent, but thematically so distinct that reading them felt like binge-watching 12 completely different, intense movies. "You Know You Want This" is probably best digested one or two stories at a time, but I kept getting lured into another and another just by Roupenian's first sentences: "The Class Six girls were bad, and everyone knew it," "This is Marla's first wine afternoon with the moms since The Incident," "Elbe was a biter." (Or there's the first sentence of "The Good Guy," which can't be printed here.) One story is about an increasingly precarious sex game, another about an 11year-old's birthday party gone wrong. There's a princess fairy tale, a guy in the Peace Corps who's tormented by his students, a bachelorette party with a special guest from a dirty movie - and that's just the half of it. As varied as Roupenian's stories are, they all clearly come from the same brain, one of those brains that feel out-of-thisworld brilliant and also completely askew - like those of Karen Russell, George Saunders, Mary Gaitskill. In addition to her simple, punchy opening lines, Roupenian likes to begin stories at true beginnings, like childhood or a brand-new relationship, her tales often ones of maturation in fast-forward. She also has a distinct method of ending, which I can only describe as pushing her characters and their plights off the deep end. These stories get really dark, really fast, often in the last page or two. That's especially the case with the first story in the book - "Bad Boy," the one about the sex game. If you can handle its brutal conclusion, you can likely handle the rest of the collection. I'LL say here that I'm not usually a fan of the dark, creepy or supernatural. My imagination holds onto those things for too long; I can't shake them. But the power of these stories transcends any one genre or element. Ultimately they're about what it means to be human. In "Sardines," a picked-on girl makes a "mean" wish for her birthday, and gets a complicated sort of revenge on her bullies. In "The Mirror, the Bucket, and the Old Thigh Bone," a princess falls in love with a figure in a cloak, which turns out to be an inanimate reflection of herself. I had a hard time determining exactly why I felt so moved by that story, but I sensed I too would be happier with that mirror, bucket and thigh bone as a partner than with most of my dates. "The Matchbox Sign" relates a man's perspective on his girlfriend's skin condition: "What if she really is hosting some kind of exotic infestation, and because of David's poorly timed outburst, the doctor wrongly consigned her to the realm of the mentally ill, drugging her into a mute endurance of her pain?" Oof. In "Biter," a woman fantasizes about biting her new co-worker, ? and when he eventually ^ forcibly kisses her, she finally feels she can get away with it. "That was awful," she thinks following his attack. "Worse than being bitten. Truly grotesque. But then, she thought, oh right. Here's my chance." I was especially disturbed by how much I enjoyed that story, as some kind of demented #MeToo-era manifesto. As for "Cat Person": I hope the story's hype doesn't define Roupenian's career, because she can do so much more. That story is just as precise and perfectly minimal as the rest of this collection, but the content is somewhat less interesting; perhaps its appeal is by now more a reflection of the expectations and experiences of its readers - our collective response to the gray areas of modern dating. What's special about "Cat Person," and the rest of the stories in "You Know You Want This," is the author's expert control of language, character, story - her ability to write stories that feel told, and yet so unpretentious and accessible that we think they must be true. lauren holmes is the author of "Barbara the Slut and Other People."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [January 27, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
After the New Yorker published Roupenian's story "Cat Person," about a college student's bad date with an older man, last December to viral success, publishers clamored for this debut collection. Accompanying that story, which resonated with the #MeToo movement, are 11 other pieces that plumb the depths of loving oneself and others. Roupenian has an ear for dialogue and a knack for satire, and she often tips her characters into dark fantasy worlds and even-stranger realities to get at their ultimate truths. In one tale, a princess turns down suitor after suitor until she finds her true love a pile of inanimate objects, wearing a cloak. In "Biter," a woman confronts her desire to sneak up on her coworker and bite his neck; she's just not sure she could get away with it. The male protagonist of the book's longest story, "The Good Guy," revisits the dating history that's left him disinterested in actually dating and imagines explaining his transgressions to a tribunal of all the women he's wronged. Curious readers will be rewarded.--Annie Bostrom Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Roupenian's solid debut is highlighted by moments of startling insight into the hidden-and often uncomfortable-truths underneath modern relationships. "Cat Person," which caused a sensation when it was first published in the New Yorker in 2017, is an unrelentingly, almost painfully, honest and perfectly rendered dramatization of the millennial heterosexual relationship and all its attendant anxieties and violences. The other stories, about sex, power, and personhood, range from the highly conceptual-in "Scarred," a woman magically summons what she thinks is her heart's desire, before she realizes the sacrifices one must make to truly attain it-to the aggressively realistic-in one of the best stories, "The Good Guy," readers are immersed into the train wreck thought process of Ted, who is certifiably and pathologically not like other guys, except, of course, that he is actually like so many guys. Another strong entry is "Death Wish," in which a divorced man living in a motel meets a girl on Tinder; when she shows up at his motel room, she has an unusual and upsetting sexual request for him. Though some stories don't land and rely too much on explication, there are some stellar moments of pithy clarity: In "Scarred," upon summoning a way to cheat desire, the protagonist muses, "I had everything that could be wanted. I invented new needs just to satisfy." This is a promising debut. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
When Roupenian's "Cat Person" was published in the New Yorker, it quickly became a cultural phenomenon. It's unheard of for a short story to go viral, but "Cat Person"through a combination of impossibly sharp writing and impossibly good timinghad done it. A year later, Roupenian's debut collection proves that success wasn't a fluke.The 12 visceral stories here range from uncomfortable to truly horrifying and are oftenthough not alwaysfocused on the vicious contradictions of being female. Roupenian's women are as terrified as they are terrifying; sometimes the violence comes to fruition and sometimes it doesn't, but the possibility is always there, bubbling under the surface. In "Bad Boy," which opens the book, a woman and her boyfriend take in a stray friend after a breakup and begin incorporating him into their sex life in increasingly sadistic ways. In "Sardines," an 11-year-old girlwho, unlike most fictional 11-year-old girls, is depicted entirely without sentiment, big-nosed and meaty-breathedmakes a wish "for something mean" on a defective birthday candle and creates a monster. "Cat Person" and then "The Good Guy," which follows it, both its companion and its opposite, are the heart of the collectionboth chronologically and in spiritas complementary investigations of gender and power. (Roupenian's depictions of the dynamics between men and woman are infinitely nuanced, but the very short version is: It's real messed up.) "Cat Person" is told from the perspective of Margot, a college student, who's on a date with Robert, who is 34 and makes her feel at once very powerful and very small. "The Good Guy" follows Ted, a nice guywho is not Robert but also not so different from himwhose relationships with women could be characterized as a dance of mutual contempt. (It is, of course, more complicated.) Some of the stories are drawn, with startling and nauseating detail, from life; others veer toward magical realism or nightmares. All of them, though, are united by Roupenian's voice, which is unsparing and unpretentious and arrestingly straightforward, so that it feels, at times, less like you are reading and more like she is simply thinking for you.Unsettling, memorable, andmaybe perverselyvery, very fun. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
