Curtis Sittenfeld's stories always satisfy
Among the 'money' stories is the first, 'Show Don't Tell,' likely inspired by Sittenfeld's stint at the Iowa Writers Workshop, about grad students sharpening their elbows as they wait to find out whether they've received a prestigious fellowship. 'The Richest Babysitter in the World' also features a 20-something protagonist, a senior at the University of Washington, who gets a job caring for the little daughter of a couple who are essentially Mr. and Mrs. Jeff Bezos in the before-times. 'At the time it seemed obscene — in a good way — to receive twenty dollars for half an hour of work.'
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Money is also important in 'Lost But Not Forgotten,' the collection's final story, which brings back Lee Fiora and several other characters from Sittenfeld's beloved debut novel, '
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Nuh-uh, Lee.
Sittenfeld's ability to write well about uncomfortable issues of race is on impressive display in 'White Women LOL,' whose title is part of one of the comments posted on a viral video of the story's hapless protagonist, Jill. As we meet Jill, she is hiding in her house, the subject of public humiliation so severe she cannot bring herself to go to the elementary school to pick up her children.
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At the 40th birthday party of Jill's friend Amy, thrown by Amy's husband at a local restaurant: 'The party was just winding down, with a third or so of the guests having departed, when Jill emerged from the restroom and noticed a table of five people who hadn't been there when she'd entered the restroom. They were Black.'
For reasons she can't imagine now, Jill took it upon herself to approach the group and tell them that they should move to a different room because of the private party. The conversation did not go well, and one of them recorded it. Soon it has been shared far and wide, and 'Vodka Vicky' has been identified by name.
As all this unfolds, the popular local news anchor, a Black woman named Vanessa Johnson, has lost her little dog Kiwi. Jill can't help feeling that if she can recover the dog, maybe…
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Up to now, Jill was pretty sure she wasn't racist. She knows about micro-aggressions, she knows you don't ask to touch a Black person's hair, she marched in a rally downtown after a Black teenager was shot, but this incident forces her to review her behavior in a series of squirmy past situations in a new, harsher light. More than any miracle she can pull off with the dog, the story suggests, this kind of critical self-examination is Jill's best hope.
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The white narrator of 'The Patron Saints of Middle Age' has two close Black friends, one of whom is hosting her when she returns to St. Louis to attend her former mother-in-law's memorial service. When she first got together with these women, after emailing with them over a biting incident at pre-school, she's 'embarrassed to admit that when I walked into the restaurant and saw two Black women sitting at a table, it didn't occur to me that they were two of the three mothers I'd been emailing.'
After the three start getting together to dine on a monthly basis, they find that they are approached and congratulated by other white women for 'public multiracial socializing' on a semi-regular basis. 'As Cheryl said after yet another of these moments, 'If there was an Asian woman with us, then they'd really get excited. It would be like a tampon commercial coming to life.'' White women LOL, indeed. Sigh.
There is often real wisdom at the heart of Sittenfeld's stories, and it's not wisdom you have to dig to find — it's direct and plainly stated. As the old commercial used to say: Try it, you'll like it.
SHOW DON'T TELL
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By Curtis Sittenfeld
Random House, 320 pages, $28
Marion Winik hosts the NPR podcast 'The Weekly Reader.' She is the author of '
.'
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