In The People Who Report More Stress, we get 13 short stories that are somewhat connected to each other. Alejandro Varela does a great job creating stories that discuss serious topics (sexuality, gender, relationships, world politics, etc) but in an accessible way. I enjoyed Varela's writing style, but found that the order of the stories perhaps didn't make a ton of sense to me. We mostly follow an interracial gay couple (Gus and Eduardo). We start with them and we end with them, but in the middle, the timeline gets fuzzy - and maybe that was the point! But, I found myself trying to follow Gus and Eduardo's story in a coherent way and didn't exactly get that. Like I said though, I really enjoyed the writing style. I look forward to reading more from this author in the future.

Overall I liked this. The writing was incredibly strong, it tackled important issues, and was both heartfelt and funny at times. That being said, I don’t think the flow of the stories made sense. Initially when they seemed to be individualist, I thought the general themes being the same was enough to hold them together. But multiple started being interconnected/about the same couple? But not all? About halfway through I was scratching my head trying to puzzle together if the current story was related and if so in what timeline and who about. If they were all about the couple or all totally different it would have pieced together really well. But with this messy middle ground it took away from an otherwise fantastic short story collection.

Thanks netgalley and publisher for sending me an digital ARC of this book.

I did not finish this book after the first chapter.

This book is written in the 2nd person and I just couldn't do it.. At least the portion I read. I could hardly make it through a page and I tried for about 4 days to make it. The style of writing is just not for me and it wasn't what I was expecting.

Loved this short story collection!!! I really like Alejandro Varela’s style of writing!! Great to read for any fans of The Town of Babylon!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for sending this ARC in exchange for an honest review of the book.

I am a public health scholar and adored Varela’s debut novel, The Town of Babylon. Ultimately, I think Varela’s writing style lends itself better to the novel, where the over societal linkages are more sparsely incorporated—but I liked some of the liberties he was able to take with form in this collection of short stories.

If you are a queer Latino man in your mid 30’s to late 40’s who likes cocktails, I highly recommend this book to you. I also will recommend it to everyone, but the aforementioned group especially.

My rambling thoughts on each story, copied and pasted from my notes app with individual ratings:

An Other Man
What I admire so much about Alejandro Varela is that he knows how to capture and bottle a relatable feeling/experience, even if you’re not a gay man looking to open your relationship for the first time (I’m not). “Sidestepping white men proves an onerous task on a distance-based application in a hyper-gentrified neighborhood.” That’s a bar for the ages. One of the better uses of second person that I’ve read.
4.25 stars

She and Her Kid and Me and Mine
This one didn’t sit as well with me—maybe because I’m not a parent—but the connections between to social issue (gentrification) and the actual interpersonal conversation felt a little forced.
3 stars

Midtown-West Side Story
What is a well-appointed burger?
I always thought manila envelope was spelled like the capital of the Philippines.
I found this hard to follow—more because of all there names than the Spanish (not at all mad to take the time to think about the Spanish even though I don’t speak). I think I got the comparison of the two stories of financial insecurity and the feeling of being robbed, but we were sort of just told how to interpret and feel about it.
3 stars

All the Bullets Were Made in My Country
I think when he says yoke he meant yolk but don’t want to mince words at that exact part of the story.
I think I got the part where the title was dropped, and the end resonated too, but I had trouble again following the trajectories of all the grandparents because the plot lines cut quite starkly for a short story.
2.5 stars

Carlitos in Charge
I’m getting a PhD and I had to look up the word syndicated so I had to suspend disbelief to buy into the interaction that a sixth grader would clap back with that word. The rap sheet of things the US ignores despite data reads really well; that’s some of my favorite form of Varela’s, just really insightful public health personalized takes made digestible and powerful.
The challenging vocab in this delayed my understanding. Why do we have supplant, fetor, and betwixt in the span of two sentences?
Shouts out the Filipino envoy there’s a lot of subtext in that interaction.
I found this story to be pretty effective and relate huge societal decisions with interpersonal tensions really well.
4.25 stars

The Great Potato Famine
I liked this one.
4 stars

The Man in 512
I think this story has the most effective management of a larger cast of characters and the strongest interiority from a main character. I found this to be really endearing!
4.25 stars

A Litany of My Fears
I have a lot of the same fears, haha.
Dr. Varela how you know so much about the Philippines?
Okay, I think I get the point of this story after sitting with it a bit? That (other factors considered) the peril of a white woman will be reacted to more strongly than the peril of a Latino man? This is one I feel the need to read back because there are relationships that I didn’t get the point of.
3.5 stars

The Six Times of Alan (and the first two hundred years of Eduardo)
Reading this book is like psychological 4D internalized racism chess. It totally resonates how the main character is situating micro aggressions against his kid in the larger space of interpersonal racism, but then inversely his actions from his therapist, who is arguably trying to build mutual understanding, sit way worse because of the racial gradient of power. The reckoning of, if someone white can really support you in the way you need partner-wise, is one I know a lot of BIPOC have grappled with. I think this was a brief and artful dealing of how that can look (and how a partner can take notes and be supportive—whether that would be enough probably goes beyond the scope of the story). Ultimately the therapist really shows a failing of understanding experiences of racial discrimination. Thanks Dr. Varela for the Filipino queer mention i know that’s riiight. George has a W take on Uber from a race standpoint without even intending to which helps me characterize him immediately. Queen Irene promotes harm reduction! The main character himself tried to understand the experiences of Black children by learning from perceptions in research articles and that does validate a lot of his fears. It’s interesting how he weighs this compared to his own experiences with his therapist. “Adapt, or die out,” is a line that will make me ill forever. That’s the violence.
4.5 stars

Waiting
I felt nicely about this story.
4.25 stars

Comrades
This kinda feels like a rebound thing?
Aside from the jokes, this translated well. Toward the end, some of the conversations got a little too tirade-y and written out for me to believe interpersonally, but this is one that I’ll remember.
4.75 stars

Grand Openings
I liked the structure of this until the end.
3.25 stars

The People Who Report More Stress
Great real-life interpretation of public health messaging. Physicians and health communication specialists should think about this one.
4 stars

This is a strong and often thought-provoking novel about individuals' relationships with family and friends, the spaces they occupy, and society more broadly -- and the way they all interact. In a series of connected stories, the author offers impactful explorations of the anxieties that individuals' face finding their place within these relationships, workplaces, and families. This is another engaging (and often funny) book from this author.

Highly recommended!

Nothing particularly unwelcome in this collection, but I wasn't able to connect with it the way I hoped. I have a friend I will have to ask after the opinion of once it releases, but otherwise don't know if I'd know the average reader well enough to recommend this their way. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an opportunity with this title.

Alejandro Varela is a gifted short story writer. Having enjoyed his novel Town of Babylon, I was excited to read his new collection, and I enjoyed it even more than his novel. In a series of interconnected short stories set in NYC, Varela explores racism, sexuality, and gentrification. I love how he uses the lens of public health in different ways throughout his fiction, and the tension that builds around knowing what needs changing without the ability to change it. I particularly enjoyed the stories that involved parenting, often bringing the direct experience of everyday racism for the main characters into these stories. Valera’s writing captures the impact on these characters of living with the stress of American social inequities while still maintaining some hope for future reparations and change. These stories lingered in my mind. It is a collection where each story has the potential to be a favorite. Thank you to NetGalley and Astra Publishing House for the early copy.

I am a huge fan of Alejandro! These stories took my breath away! These stories spoke to me in so many ways!

* Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for sending this ARC in exchange for an honest review of the book*

There are thirteen different stories in the book, which are all interconnected, but they mostly revolve around an interracial gay couple.
I was very curious to read “The People Who Report More Stress” as I have heard amazing things about the author’s debut.
What I appreciated the most were the subject matters of the stories as they are all very important and current issues such as immigration, racism, homophobia, housing, and more. It’s not very common to treat such issues with the respect and honesty they deserve and I admire the way the author presented them in his stories: he did it in a poignant yet incredibly moving way.
The main reason I didn't enjoy this book as much as I could have was the writing: it wasn't very cohesive, and the stories weren't well connected, they felt like they were a bit all over the place.
Even though style of the book probably supposed to make me relate more to the story and identify to the various characters, it actually did the opposite: I felt very emotionally distant and the sentences felt a bit brusque, the rhythm was a bit choppy and it read more like a screenplay filled with stage directions.
In my opinion the big potential and the immense emotional charge of the book weren’t fully put to fruition, but I will definitely read Varela’s debut as I feel like he has an interesting and insightful take on these crucial topics that affect our society.

There were a lot of stories in this collection, and as with most collections, some were good and some okay. The interconnected stories were good and a few of the queer stories were relatable and funny, particularly the first story where the couple is trying to find a guy for one of the couple. I don't believe I may have been the correct audience for some of these stories.

This short story collection is genius. I thoroughly enjoyed all of them. Whether it's a story about playground politics, online dating, navigating long-term relationships and heteronormative standards for gay couples with children, a tutor of a rich Swedish family, geopolitics at the UN, interracial dating, Alejandro's writing makes me giggle bc it's so clever. And I had to look up several words that I didn't know--love it! 

“It was a sort of triplication of hopelessness.”

“The ignominy, however, of being denied a ride home in full light—on a day when standing upright bordered on hardship—was in a category all its own.”

Alejandro writes about the WTF microlevel moments around race/class/gender/sexuality with macrolevel impacts in ways that remind me of Rumaan Alam in Leave the World Behind. 

“It rankles me dearly to meet so many white people who use their inheritances and no-interest loans to buy homes in previously Black and brown neighborhoods, while (probably) secretly questioning—or allowing their parents and drunk uncles to—the spending habits of poor Black and brown people, as if slavery and Jim Crow and wage-law chicanery and redlining aren’t still lurking, as if poor white people don’t also buy wide-screen TV sets and phones and sneakers.”

This was such an enjoyable book and I loved how the author called out so many of these issues. It made me feel vindicated and seen bc I am constantly thinking and experiencing some of these kinds of moments myself. I will definitely be recommending it on my social media page, and thank you for the eARC!

These interconnected stories were often confusing, in that I had trouble figuring out when they were building upon a previous one and when they weren't. In some sense, it seemed to be one big story with offshoots, but then I'd read something that would be similar but just different enough to suggest that I should consider it separate. The lines were blurred, but the themes were very strong. There was so much anxiety surrounding the state of the world, and especially around issues of racism, homophobia, etc. Oftentimes, these would cross over into a righteous rage, yet the expression of it felt restrained somehow. The potential felt huge, and then it's like the energy behind it would fizzle or come out pastel when it could have been a deep jewel tone. I wasn't necessarily disappointed by that, but I wonder if it was a stylistic effect or a purposeful choice with a message behind it.

The People Who Report More Stress is a hilarious collection of stories tackling a wide range of issues from parenting to racism. Both politically relevant and entertaining, Alejandro Varela has struck the right balance to create the perfect novel for our current moment.

Thank you to Astra House and NetGalley for sending me an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Before I begin, I have to admit that I have not yet read Alejandro Varela’s debut, but after this, I will surely be getting to it soon!

The People Who Report More Stress contains thirteen interconnected short stories—most of which center around an interracial gay couple. Again, I have never read any of Varela’s writing, but by the end of the first few stories, I was sure this would be something special.

Yes, these stories are routinely distressing—yet there is also so much love and humor present that I found myself wanting to stay within some of them long after they ended.

Varela writes about many issues such as race as it relates to housing, politics, immigration, and academia—but also about family, relationships, and sexuality. Several of these ideas are present in every story, but they never manage to feel tedious. The prose is remarkable, and so is the way Varela moves through characters and time to craft a collection that ultimately feels cohesive and impactful.

I look forward to revisiting this upon release and I hope to get to The Town of Babylon sometime next year!

Thank you, Astra Publishing House, Astra House, for allowing me to read The People Who Report More Stress early!

Alejandro Varela has such a compelling voice and writing style.. I loved his debut The Town of Babylon and this story collection was as great, if not better.