I went into Lily King’s short story collection, Five Tuesdays in Winter, with high expectations – after all, Writers and Lovers was one of my favourites in 2020.
Five Tuesdays suffers from patchitis. I just made that word up, but know that it’s a common affliction in short story collections. In other words, patchy, or uneven. The last few stories could have been done away with entirely as they detracted from some strong starters, namely Creature, about a teenager’s summer job babysitting and her naive romantic fantasies; the titular story, which describes a single father navigating relationships; and North Sea, about a mother and daughter’s experience of grief.
The standout was When in the Dordogne, about a 12yo who is left in the care of two college students for the summer, while his parents, academics, holiday in Europe. It had a gorgeous Wonder Years vibe, and although some readers will think it’s ‘cheating’ to do a huge leap in time in a short story (in order to provide a conclusion), I loved it.
I can look back on that time now as if rereading a book I was too young for the first time around.
King fans will note a return to familiar themes – parent/child relationships; recognising love; and grief – and her writing is, as always, lush and emotional in all the right places, and never overdone.
She wondered how other people adjusted to vacations. It was such an unpleasant feeling, like gunning a car in neutral.
3/5 Enjoyable but not remarkable.
I received my copy of Five Tuesdays in Winter from the publisher, Grove Atlantic, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.
I was the martini baby, conceived, I’m sure, after one too many in late July of 1971. My parents already had their family… My father was fifty-one, my mother forty-seven. It must have seemed slightly obscene back then, a woman of her age getting pregnant. I was such a deep inconvenience to them. That much was clear already, although not something I could have ever put in words. It was purely visceral, a confused shame lodged inside my gut, a sense that I had been terribly, terribly bad but not being able to recall what I’d done wrong.
Might see if I can use patchitis
😂
I would agree with you that the collection was uneven and that the 1980s coming-of-age material was the strongest. There were a few stories that definitely didn’t seem to belong.
We used to be surprised when all the songs on an LP were good, perhaps short story collections are the same – two or three clunkers snuck in to make up the numbers.
Yeah, that’s a good way of thinking about it. I reckon I’ve only read one collection that was even from beginning to end – Curtis Sittenfeld’s You Think It I’ll Say It. Possibly one of Rose Tremain’s collections as well.
Short stories are on my list for the new year, as I don’t read many in general. This one sounds interesting, if patchy!
You may have made up patchitis but I immediately knew what you meant!