Show Don't Tell: Stories

A wry, fiercely intelligent and moving collection of short stories exploring themes of marriage and female friendship—including a story that revisits the main character from her iconic novel, Prep—from the New York Times bestselling author of Eligible and Romantic Comedy.

Curtis Sittenfeld wields her razor-sharp wit in her second provocative collection of short stories. In "Lost But Not Forgotten," she gives readers of her novel Prep a chance to see how the beloved character Lee Fiora is doing twenty years later, when she returns to Ault for an alumni reunion and grapples with memories of an incident that happened while she was a student there. In "Pretzels Are For Biting," a woman spends time with two best friends that she moved away from after the dissolution of her marriage. And in "Follow-Up," a wife and mother relies on her oldest friend in the time between receiving concerning results on a medical test and her follow-up appointment. In "Creative Differences," a young Kansan photographer balks when she realizes that the "documentary" she stars in is actually a commercial for a multi-national corporation. And in "Atomic Marriage," a Hollywood producer finds herself attracted to the author of a bestselling Christian marital self-help book while working on the film adaptation.

In these and seven other dazzling stories, Sittenfeld examines and skewers assumptions about fame, marriage, and the ways that time can invert the long-held hierarchies and beliefs we all hold so fixed in our minds. Sittenfeld lays bare on the page what we're all thinking but hesitate to speak into existence, exploring women's lives at the intersection of ambition, intimacy, and the entangled pursuit of a fulfilling life.