Audiobook Review: You Think It I’ll Say It by Curtis Sittenfeld

You Think It, I'll Say It
by Curtis Sittenfeld
Narrator: Emily Rankin, Mark Deakins
Pages: 8
Published by Random House Audio
Publication Date April 24, 2018
Goodreads

A suburban mother of two fantasizes about the downfall of an old friend whose wholesome lifestyle empire may or may not be built on a lie. A high-powered lawyer honeymooning with her husband is caught off guard by the appearance of the girl who tormented her in high school. A shy Ivy League student learns the truth about a classmate’s seemingly enviable life.
Curtis Sittenfeld has established a reputation as a sharp chronicler of the modern age who humanizes her subjects even as she skewers them. Now, with this first collection of short fiction, her “astonishing gift for creating characters that take up residence in readers’ heads” (The Washington Post) is showcased like never before. Throughout the ten stories in You Think It, I’ll Say It, Sittenfeld upends assumptions about class, relationships, and gender roles in a nation that feels both adrift and viscerally divided.
With moving insight and uncanny precision, Curtis Sittenfeld pinpoints the questionable decisions, missed connections, and sometimes extraordinary coincidences that make up a life. Indeed, she writes what we’re all thinking—if only we could express it with the wit of a master satirist, the storytelling gifts of an old-fashioned raconteur, and the vision of an American original.

This is the second book of short stories I’ve read in 2020 and sadly it was another fail.  I find it odd as I adore the works of David Sedaris.  I think the difference is that Ann Patchet and Curtis Settinfeld write in the vain of a novella without enough bite.

Unfortunately, I found You Think It, I’ll Say It to be a tedious read. I labored through listening to the second half, mainly because I had gone too far not to finish it. It became background noise, thus coming to the conclusion, that unless it is a short story involving redecorating the Anne Frank House, life is too short to read short stories.

Reading this book contributed to these challenges:

• Reese Witherspoon Book Club Challenge