Overall I liked the stories. The stories are about woman who are reflecting on life and the choices they have made or not made. Like any collection some stories are stronger than others. Enjoy

The writing in these stories was very human and with a great degree of emotional intelligence. Having said that, the stories were not exactly remarkable; verging on forgettable. I would, however, read a longer piece of fiction by this author.

I really enjoyed this collection of stories. I was introduced to a wonderful cast of characters who overcome a lot. They were easy to relate to and I felt a connection with them.

I absolutely adored these short stories and could happily have read another book of them. Broadly about artistic or creative people trying and sometimes failing to make their way in the world, there is in fact a huge breadth of perspectives and experiences explored here, all in an incredibly fresh voice. Whole worlds are created in just a few pages and there are some beautiful turns of phrase. One of my favourite things I’ve read this year and I’ll be looking out for more from both Sara Schaff and Split Lip Press.

This short stories collection was a mixed bag, a lot of the stories I felt "meh" about, with only few really catching my eye. The stories revolve around women, mostly women facing struggles in their relationships, careers, their position in life, and the general feeling of loss.

There was a story about a breakup and its effects on our main characters after years, a story about an art student and how her perception of her classmate whom she rarely noticed changes after he survives a deadly fall, a story about a group of friends at different stages and levels of success in their writing careers, a story about two sibling cleaning their mother's house after her death and the realizations the daughter has as she starts getting rid of her mother's belongings, a story about a woman dealing with the imminent loss of her husband leaving her with 3 children. These are just some of the stories here, and while some of them really were relevant to our modern age, I wasn't totally in love with the writing style.

Maybe it wasn't just for me, but I like any short story collection that focuses on women.

I thank Netgalley for the digital ARC

I opened The Invention of Love thinking I was picking up were I closed Say Something Nice to Me. Happily, this was not the case. These stories are very different. Schaff has introduced me to a new set of wonderful characters who are very real in Schaff's very capable hands. These are women who have complex issues that are easy to identify with yet are the characters' uniquely own. Much like the characters in Say Something Nice to Me, these characters are unapologetic in their rawness; in their truth, making them so utterly real. They don't solve their problems nor do they rationalize them - they just live them which makes for such a wonderful read.

𝑰 𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒐𝒘𝒆𝒅 𝒎𝒚𝒔𝒆𝒍𝒇 𝒂 𝒈𝒐𝒐𝒅, 𝒔𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒔𝒇𝒚𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒎𝒊𝒏𝒖𝒕𝒆 𝒐𝒇 𝒅𝒆𝒆𝒑 𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒕.

The women in Sara Schaff’s second collection of stories face and often wonder at their former selves, are plagued by the aftermath of their decisions, long for who they could have been, wonder how they can still be, fight the shifts of time as years slip through their exhausted fingers, and try to make sense of love. Pivotal moments are sometimes dull, other times ugly and filled with betrayal.

In 𝑨𝒇𝒇𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒗𝒆 𝑴𝒆𝒎𝒐𝒓𝒚 a woman recalls her short-lived relationship with a man named Luke and the ‘particular pain of this receding moment’. The contradictory emotions that plague us when what we have slips away and we grieve it even if we don’t want it. The title story 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑰𝒏𝒗𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝒐𝒇 𝑳𝒐𝒗𝒆 delves into a strange incident one night at a party and its tie to an art student’s hunger to create something meaningful. She is loaded with envy for the true genius in her lithography class and maybe wants his attention? 𝑺𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑬𝒍𝒔𝒆 is a ‘grad school coming-of-age story, a tale of being over educated and under employed. Big things are happening for one friend, while others are settling to the bottom.

𝑯𝒐𝒖𝒔𝒆 𝑯𝒖𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈 after the loss of their mother, who died in the very place she herself hated, always wanted ‘someplace prettier’ siblings Diane and Toby must decide what to do with the smelly, eyesore that is their pitiful inheritance. Overwhelmed by shame and guilt, Diane escapes by house hunting for gorgeous homes she will never live in and makes a surprising decision in the end. 𝑾𝒆 𝑨𝒓𝒆 𝑹𝒆𝒂𝒅𝒚 is about much younger siblings and their grief at having to leave their home in the country for the confinement of the city and their sad mother’s unbearable reality.

𝑾𝒆𝒔𝒕 𝑳𝒂𝒌𝒆 an expat must deal with the looming birth of her daughter in the midst of her husband’s infidelity. She chooses to walk out of her life, to deny her husband the vision of her most naked and animal self. What feels like revenge could be self-discovery and a fresh outlook. 𝑵𝒐𝒓𝒆𝒆𝒏 𝑶’𝑴𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒆𝒚 𝒂𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑺𝒖𝒏𝒔𝒆𝒕 𝑷𝒐𝒐𝒍 is the cost and weight of poor decisions, a young woman realizes that wanting a thing to be true doesn’t make it so.

𝑶𝒖𝒓 𝑳𝒂𝒅𝒚 𝒐𝒇 𝑮𝒖𝒂𝒛á Sisters, Marcela and Valentina born to different fathers fight over their dead mother’s jeans in Bogotá, but more it is what the jeans seem to represent. 𝑴𝒚 𝑯𝒖𝒔𝒃𝒂𝒏𝒅’𝒔 𝑺𝒆𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒅 𝑾𝒊𝒇𝒆 is my favorite, it is beautiful and raw. Anger, admiration, the glamour of the very woman who has stolen the narrator’s husband is impossible to resist… but why are the works of Tolstoy ‘like a brick’ to her? This story has the makings of a full novel, the things Schaff could explore. It’s funny how betrayal creates connections.

𝑪𝒍𝒂𝒊𝒓𝒆 𝑻𝒆𝒍𝒍𝒔 𝑨 𝑺𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒚 is about escaping the tediousness of one’s own life by sinking into the tales of someone else’s more ‘colorful’ existence. 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑨𝒍𝒍 𝑪𝒍𝒆𝒂𝒓 is about an artist who isn’t creating anymore, stagnating, too tired with the demands of survival (family, work) to even remember who she was when she finished the work in her old portfolio.

𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑬𝒏𝒅 𝒐𝒇 𝑾𝒐𝒓𝒌𝒔𝒉𝒐𝒑 is about the strange envy a successful professor feels towards his female student who strays from his assignment with an idea of her own. 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑴𝒂𝒏 𝑹𝒖𝒏𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑯𝒊𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑪𝒐𝒎𝒎𝒊𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒆 is how women are disqualified in the hiring process, but it’s not sexism, sure. 𝑬𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒚𝒐𝒏𝒆 𝑮𝒆𝒕𝒔 𝑰𝒕 a copywriter throws her hat in the ring for a job, deals with the heavy weight of politics during the 2016 election while fighting the misogamy in her office, and waits to win… and waits… and waits.

These stories have one thing in common, the unreliability of life. Who doesn’t face that at some stage on their journey? The big moments often sneak in through our missteps, it’s what we do after that matters. Even if it’s just stepping back to reflect.

Published June 15, 2020

Split/Lip Press