You Think It, I'll Say It review: Curtis Sittenfeld's insightful stories

You Think It, I'll Say It

Curtis Sittenfeld

Doubleday, $29.99

American writer Curtis Sittenfeld, with five novels behind her and still only in her early forties, has turned her hand to short stories and some of these are very recent. The first, The Nominee, is a virtuoso dramatic monologue in the voice of Hillary Clinton, who has just won the Democratic presidential candidacy, which sets this story in July of 2016. This opening story is insightful, witty, and revealing, with a killer punchline. Other standout stories include Gender Studies, which is actually more about class than gender, and The World Has Many Butterflies, where the parlour game from which this collection takes its title is manipulatively used by one character to reveal the bitchiness of another. Sittenfeld is a comfortable white middle-class citizen of Middle America and so are most of her characters, but this does not obviate the reality of their troubles with envy, disappointment, love, and regret.