I enjoy Katherine Heiny’s writing. She makes me laugh and I’m quite okay with the odd boundary that she pushes. Her novels are terrific but I reckon it’s in short stories where she really shines – there’s no overdoing the joke, it’s all punch-and-to-the-point. Single, Carefree, Mellow met my expectations.

Single, Carefree, Mellow is an even collection of eleven stories. The style is consistent and you very much know you’re reading Heiny. The stories are about adult women and their (difficult) relationships, with themes focused on fidelity, manners and sex.

The thing about Heiny’s stories are that they tick along nicely and then there’s something that might be considered ‘shocking’. It’s these bits that usually make me burst out laughing (sometimes it’s uncomfortable laughter). In this collection, two stories deliver this in spades. The first is The Dive Bar, where a woman, Sasha, meets the wife of the man she is having an affair with. The meeting seems almost convivial until the wife, Anne, changes tack –

And it is at precisely this point that Anne leans forward slightly and says, “You know, Carson won’t stay with you.”
Sasha blinks. She had almost forgotten who Anne was.
Anne smiles grimly. “He’s just cunt struck, is all.”
The writer in Sasha rushes forward to examine this sentence. Cunt struck. The term is so ugly, yet so arresting, that she almost admires it.

Anne goes on to accuse Sasha of being a homewrecker and having no morals.

Two things occur to Sasha at this instant. One: Having morals is not something she’s ever aspired to. Successful writer, loyal friend, pretty girl; those have been goals, but she can’t say moral person has ever made the list, and that’s kind of startling to realize. Two (and this possibly should have occurred to her quite a while ago): She doesn’t have to sit here and listen to this. She can leave. 

The second notable story is Dark Matter, about a woman having a fling with her boss, despite being newly engaged to be married. The story opens with –

Here is what Maya’s boss said to her after they made love the first time: “Did you know that peanuts are one of the ingredients in dynamite?” Maya stopped pulling her tights back on and stared at him. He was clearly one of those men whose brains generated arcane semi-educational tidbits of knowledge right after sex. Maya thought of them as come facts.

The ‘come facts’ set the theme of the story, and what constitutes the betrayal is not at all what I expected. It’s very funny on many levels and the cast of characters (and their quirks) is genius.

Jokes aside, Heiny writes the self-critic inner voice precisely; understands suburban lives; and captures the nuance in female friendships. These ingredients make for a cracker collection.

Sasha looks up and sees Monique down the block, and has that thrill you get from seeing someone familiar on the streets of New York, like looking through a box of old paperbacks at a garage sale and finding a copy of a novel you love.

Single, Carefree, Mellow is my fourth collection as part of Short Story September, hosted by Lisa at ANZ LitLovers.

4/5

Sasha and Monique decide it is too hot to go back to their un-airconditioned apartment and so they go downtown and watch two movies in a row and eat a whole big box of popcorn …. Then they walk very slowly uptown in the evening heat and go to a bar across the street from their apartment and start drinking Sea Breezes.