Show Don’t Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld was probably one of my most anticipated books of 2025 (I rarely pre-order but this one, I did). I was excited because her last short story collection, You Think It, I’ll Say It was exceptionally good (subtext – Show had a lot to live up to…).

There are twelve stories in the collection – very much character-driven (don’t wait for plot twists), with the focus on the inner lives of middle aged women.

From time to time, Janie wonders if David is having an affair. Because of how rigidly he sees things, she doubts it, but if he is, she’s not sure she can summon the requisite outrage, nor, really, can she identify with the impulse.

Sittenfeld consistently does two things very well – she has a light but pointed touch when it comes to politics. Her stories are absolutely political but she marks her position with stealth, bringing the reader along gradually, so that you understand how a character arrived at their particular point-of-view. In this collection, The Hug, about a woman navigating her ex’s visit during COVID restrictions, is a good example.

When she speaks, her tone is pensive rather than defiant. She says, “It’s interesting, because before 2016, I think I might have felt like I needed your permission for this. I’d have preemptively given you the power to tell me I couldn’t do it, or maybe I’d have bought into some idea that it wasn’t allowed in a marriage. But as despicable as Trump is, he’s made me see that so many of the things I thought people couldn’t do were just things people usually don’t do. They’re just norms. They aren’t laws.”
What’s Rob supposed to say to this? Congratulations on your feminist awakening? Fuck you? What he says is, “Comparing me to Trump is a pretty low blow.”
“No,” she says calmly. “In this scenario, I’m Trump.”

Secondly, Sittenfeld is really good at the modern moral dilemma, or rather, stories about political in/correctness. In Giraffe and Flamingo, a woman looks back on her days in a co-ed residence hall, and understands the behaviour of fellow students quite differently than she did at the time, and in White Women LOL, a woman deals with the aftermath of being caught on camera in a ‘Karen’ moment.

Two favourites in this collection. The first was The Richest Babysitter in the World, about a woman who reflects on her time as a babysitter for a family who had a burgeoning tech business, which soon turns into the equivalent of what we now recognise as Amazon. She wrestles with what constitutes good behaviour and social responsibility.

Are the Woleys good and bad in the same proportions that I am, but the vastness of their wealth makes the consequences of their choices more dramatic?

The second favourite was the last story in the collection, Lost but Not Forgotten, about a woman, Lee Fiora, attending an alumni reunion at her boarding school. Those who have read Sittenfeld’s breakout novel, Prep, will enjoy meeting Lee again.

Lee on Botox (but this is about more than Botox, right? This is about the peace that can come with age) –

It was hard to explain why I wouldn’t. It wasn’t a lack of vanity. It was more that there was a way I understood myself that had felt entrapping in adolescence but liberating as I got older, a version of wherever you go, there you are. If I’d still be me with Botox, why bother with the Botox? “I probably wouldn’t,” I said, “but I’m a huge hypocrite in other ways. Isn’t the best any of us can hope for to be endearingly hypocritical?”

Show Don’t Tell is my third collection as part of Short Story September, hosted by Lisa at ANZ LitLovers.

3/5

“The first time I met Neil’s parents, they took us out for dinner to an Italian restaurant on the Hill, and I ordered lemon sorbet for dessert. And literally, from that time on, his mom kept lemon sorbet on hand in their freezer for me.” I smiled and teared up at the same time as I added, “And I don’t actually like it very much. I’d never ordered it other than that time.”