Review by Booklist Review
The women in this acutely observed short story collection struggle to name the dull ache their lives seem to be permeated with. Is there a difference, wonders the narrator in "Terms of Agreement," between making it and having it made? The millennials sometimes suffer from impostor syndrome as they make their way in a world that follows rules drafted by others. Even when they do make it, as Suzanne does in "By Design," it's only to find that the carefully constructed empire is a precarious house of cards. Whether Sestanovich's characters are young or old, common emotions weave through her tales. Envy is a dominant force, as is insecurity. In one of the most aching lines, a young woman wishes for her life to be rebuilt anew. It will be like "building a building, like finding God, like getting old and stacking Tupperware and wishing for your life, at last, to be contained," she dreams. If at times the stories feel a little too clinical, they still offer a master class in capturing the complexities of everyday life.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Sestanovich's intelligent debut collection demonstrates a gift for pithy detail that encapsulates the whole of a character's personality or era of lived experience. In the title story, protagonist Leonora is hung up on an ex: "They had exchanged love letters and endured two or three pregnancy scares. Once, they had been accosted at knifepoint. They had gone to funerals together. Most of all, they had fought passionately." In "Annunciation," the passive ennui of recent graduate Iris is juxtaposed against the more definitive, if slightly absurd, lives of others: her married housemates are in a food-oriented polyamorous relationship with another couple; Iris's best friend teaches her "to eat burgers and bagels and bacon--there was nothing as powerful as eating masculine foods with feminine grace." At times, the observations and jokes give way to poignant insights into the characters' psyches: in "Wants and Needs," Val, misinterpreting a facial expression, is "filled with bitterness for all the faces that had refused to reveal themselves to her." The collection finds cohesion around the quiet angst of mostly young, female narrators who long for experiences, other people, and states of being just beyond their grasp. These technically accomplished if not quite revolutionary stories demonstrate a high command of craft. Agent: Bill Clegg, the Clegg Agency. (June)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Short fiction populated by characters whose various longings remain unfulfilled. In "By Design," the second story in Sestanovich's debut collection, Suzanne, a successful graphic designer and the founder of her own firm, is sued for sexual harassment by a younger male colleague. Suzanne's life falls to pieces: She pulls the plug on her marriage, leaves her company, throws out all her clothing, and moves into a high-rise, where she keeps her apartment's shelves bare. Her adult son asks her to design his wedding invitations. They will reflect Suzanne's aesthetic, she thinks: "elegant….Occasionally a little too austere." The same could be said of Sestanovich. These stories are restrained, nearly aloof, despite the fact that the characters are constantly and messily butting up against the futility of their desires. In "Old Hope," the young, aimless narrator decides to suddenly resume correspondence with her former high school English teacher while she and a male friend struggle to understand whether they are attracted to each other. The title story features a narrator who shares a tiny apartment with her guitarist/activist boyfriend, watching his life unravel at the same time her ex is elected to Congress and not being sure where her loyalties lie, if anywhere at all. The closing story, "Separation," traces the life of Kate and the various separations she endures: first when her young husband dies, then when she works at a nursery school helping toddlers with separation anxiety, then, finally, as the mother of a troubled young woman who leaves home to move across the country. Even in these emotionally wrenching scenarios, Sestanovich remains taciturn, offering the reader images and sentences of delicate beauty but leaving much, perhaps too much, unspoken. A collection shot through with crystalline moments but that ultimately holds readers at arm's length. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
