Single Carefree Mellow (Heiny) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Sharply perceptive.... Ms. Heiny [has] powers of writerly seduction...[a] gift for dreaming up otherwise smart women who lapse into temporary insanity while besotted.
Janet Maslin - New York Times


[S]omething like Cheever mixed with Ephron: white, middle-class suburban discontent simmering below the surface, but treated with a light touch that keeps the focus squarely on the woman's point of view…. [O]n the whole Heiny is very good at portraying the circumscribed landscapes, both literal and emotional, in which her characters live. She also gives credence to what is still a conundrum for many women: What role can I play in a world in which I am neither fully "carefree" and "mellow" when single, nor entirely "giving" and "content" when attached? A world in which I am still implicated in conventions of how women should be?
Naomi Fry - New York Times Book Review


To encounter the wry, funny stories in Katherine Heiny’s Single, Carefree, Mellow is to experience the best form of simultaneous pleasure and sadness.
Philadelphia Tribune


Heartbreaking and darkly comic.
Atlantic


[Heiny is] a badass storyteller.
Huffington Post
 
Chances are you’ve already heard the buzz on this collection of short stories, each of which has a relationship or affair at its center. But no matter how good you imagine it is, it’s better.
Glamour.com


Winning stories you won’t forget.
People
 

Dissatisfied teenagers and bored housewives, clueless boyfriends and cuckolded husbands, and 11 variations on the recurrent theme of infidelity and its fallout populate Heiny’s first collection of stories.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) Not all [of Heiny’s characters] are single (or carefree or mellow), but they are all singular, and following their stories is like sitting at a dive bar tossing back deceptively pretty, surprisingly strong drinks with a pal who may not always make the best decisions but always comes away with the most colorful tales.
Kirkus Reviews