Curtis Sittenfeld’s new short story collection ‘Show Don’t Tell’: review

Bestselling “Prep” and “Romantic Comedy” creator Curtis Sittenfeld dwells within the comically awkward. In her totally diverting assortment of 12 brief tales, “Present Don’t Inform,” she contemplates youthful insecurity and old flame; the quandary of privilege; the satisfactions of friendship; the disappointments of marriage; and the perils of writerly ambition. Her protagonists are largely girls coming into their very own or dealing with down center age with each a eager sense of the sardonic and a deep reservoir of self-compassion. They will snigger at life’s absurdities and challenges — to not point out their very own quirks and failures — whilst they obsess over them. Sittenfeld’s worldview is extra utopian than dystopian; Jane Austen-like, she treats her characters with humanity, even when their actions are cringe-inducing.

Take Jill, the protagonist of “White Girls LOL.” She’s been branded a Karen on social media for confronting 5 Black restaurant patrons over their presence in an space designated for her good friend Amy’s birthday celebration. Declaring that there’s a non-public occasion happening, Jill suggests they take their drinks and transfer elsewhere. “Do you are feeling unsafe? Are you going to name the cops?” one in all them retorts. Realizing too late that her interference is studying as racist, she makes an attempt to easy issues over. “This isn’t political,” she protests, which solely heightens the strain. The alternate is captured on a visitor’s iPhone and goes viral, after which Jill finds herself watching and rewatching the video, reflecting that “she was making an attempt more durable than common, more durable than she would have finished with a gaggle of white individuals, to appear pleasant and diplomatic.” Meantime, associates cease responding to her texts, and she or he is suspended from her company job pending an HR investigation. To repent, she goes to excessive measures to find her Black neighbor’s lacking Shih Tzu.

That is difficult territory, and Sittenfeld handles it with nuance and aplomb. Jill is at first in disbelief that anybody — particularly these near her — would possibly misread her so egregiously. However pondering again on previous occasions, she wonders if there haven’t been occasions when she’s acted out of unacknowledged prejudice and entitlement — a theme that recurs in a number of of the opposite tales on this gorgeous assortment, the creator’s second.

The title story, “Show Don’t Tell,” which initially ran within the New Yorker in 2017, is about amid the crucible of a graduate faculty writing program. Sittenfeld, who earned her grasp of high-quality arts in 2001 from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, aptly captures the sense of promise that permeates, in addition to the anxieties that pressure friendships and egos, in such settings. She’s additionally keenly conscious that by way of who will finally reach getting printed, “luck falls inconsistently.”

Whereas ready to search out out who will obtain a coveted fellowship, Ruthie hangs out with classmate Bhadveer, a misogynist within the making. He is aware of he’s already gotten one of many spots, however Ruthie remains to be on tenterhooks. They take turns guessing who else will get the nod. Ruthie speculates that their colleague Aisha is the most certainly candidate, however Bhadveer disagrees: “Nice literature has by no means been produced by a stupendous girl,” he pontificates. When Ruthie denounces the assertion as ridiculous, he doubles down: “There tends to be an inverse relationship between how sizzling a girl is and the way good a author.” “That’s actually the dumbest thought I’ve ever heard,” says Ruthie. However Bhadveer presses ahead: “It’s as a result of you should be hungry to be an incredible author, and exquisite girls aren’t hungry.”

A few years later, after Bhadveer and Ruthie have grow to be well-known authors, they run into one another on e book tour. Bhadveer is perceived as being extra “literary,” on observe to win a Pulitzer. Ruthie has had extra bestsellers, however “my novels are thought-about ‘girls’s fiction.’” This inequity might needle her, however Ruthie is acutely conscious that whereas she is gifted, she’s additionally been lucky. Bhadveer has no such humility. His success hasn’t made him any much less beneficiant, and now he can’t assist himself from letting Ruthie know he hasn’t learn one in all her seven novels. He additionally derides their former classmates with gusto: ”It’s humorous that nobody aside from us is profitable, isn’t it?”

Sittenfeld, who edited the 2020 quantity of “The Finest American Quick Tales,” right here saves her greatest for final. “Misplaced However Not Forgotten” revisits Lee Fiora, a personality who first appeared in “Prep.” It’s been a long time since Lee graduated from Ault, and she or he finds herself again on the fancy Massachusetts boarding faculty for her thirtieth reunion. She’s now single and a founding father of a outstanding nonprofit that helps the incarcerated. Having gone to Ault on scholarship, Lee remembers that “I at all times felt I used to be implicitly apologizing for not being sufficiently wealthy and preppy and privileged.” The irony is she now acknowledges that though she typically felt like an outsider at Ault, her attendance on the faculty made her an automated insider: “In all of the years since I graduated, I’ve been reckoning with simply how wealthy, preppy, and privileged I’m.”

On the reunion, she bonds with Jeff, a pupil she barely observed again then. She finds herself opening as much as him — and to her longtime good friend, Dede — in methods she by no means would have when she was youthful. “The only greatest distinction between my teenage self and my middle-aged self,” she displays, “is that I’d as soon as been roiling with ideas and opinions and yearnings that I suspected have been unusual or shameful or just inexpressible, and due to this fact didn’t specific them. As I obtained older, it wasn’t the ideas and opinions that went away; solely over time, their suppression.”

A radiant contentment pervades these tales. They’re retrospective however don’t rue the passage of time. This can be a author who’s snug in her pores and skin. Sittenfeld is a pointy observer of social mores and an astute decide of character, however she’s by no means merciless — she’s the other of a misanthrope. As Ruthie confides to a visiting author: “Some persons are annoying. However even the annoying ones — they’re normally annoying in fascinating methods.”

Haber is a author, editor and publishing strategist. She was director of Oprah’s Ebook Membership and books editor for O, the Oprah Journal.