*exhales*

I came into this book thinking it was a collection of essays (like I've seen Bad Feminist attributed as), but if any of the short stories are non-fiction, they weren't distinguished from the bulk of fiction. These stories are raw, <i>powerful</i>, uncomfortable, unsettling, and unflinching.

The brutality of the characters and their experiences were shocking...and yet you come away thinking "This might not be my experience, but that doesn't mean it's uncommon." Which I think is the point. I haven't read Bad Feminist, so I don't really know Gay's POV, but I think some of the strength and victory Gay intended for her characters is actually heartbreaking.

While this isn't a book I could recommend lightly (tolerance levels for the sex and violence that permeates will vary wildly, and I think that's okay), it is powerful, and the reader will be affected.

Difficult Women by Roxane Gay was stellar because...well it was written by Roxane Gay! This collection of short stories features female main characters who don't fit into boxes. After reading this, you'll see how scripted most novels featuring women are.

Difficult Women is the hotly anticipated short story collection from Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist. These stories all follow women in America. Some of the women are poor, some of them are privileged, they are from all different age brackets and diverse backgrounds – what ties them together is that they all somehow seem emotionally haunted. The first story, I Will Follow You, follows two sisters who cling to each other, even in adulthood, following a traumatic experience in their youth. The second story is about a woman who is followed by damp and mould wherever she goes, which I’m assuming is a metaphor for despondency. My favourite story of the bunch, Florida, is actually multiple tiny stories within a short story, each providing a glimpse into the lives of a variety of people in a Naples, Florida neighborhood. I’m not normally a huge short story fan, but in usual Roxane Gay fashion, the writing here is so brutally honest it was hard to turn away from this book. If you like writing that will get under your skin, Difficult Women is very worthwhile.

Published in the Napanee Guide ("What's New in Fiction?") March 2, 2017

This book is not one is want to read. I have tried it and it is not for me. Sorry.

DIFFICULT WOMEN BY ROXANE GAY
i am in the minority giving this collection of stories only three stars. I feel as though I am being generous giving three. First of all, I received this unrequested title the night before it was archived, on the evening of January 10
, 2017. A dear friend and neighbor was tragically killed in an accident which happened when I noticed this on my shelf on January 12, 2017. Since it is a collection of short stories I wanted to read them thoroughly.

I didn't feel any warmth in this entire collection. Maybe I would have liked them if I wasn't devastated by the death of a dear friend and neighbor and feeling rushed because I received them the night before they archived.

I know these stories have received awards for Best short story, Best Mystery Short Story and a long list of publications. Honestly, I didn't think any of them could be described as Beautiful or dazzling. My experience while reading these were feelings such as dark, bleak, despair, cold, misogynistic.
Two sister's aged ten and eleven years old are abducted and brutally raped and held captive for an undetermined amount of time by a pedophile are scarred into their adulthood. One sister marries and the other sister is forced to move to Reno, Nevada in a dilapidated motel. The description of the run down motel is a leaky water stained black with rot and mush ceiling and walls. The sister's are never going to recover.

A stripper who is trying to pay her college tuition is stalked and brutally raped by one of her regular clients that she is repulsed by. The man who followed her home pushes his way into her apartment and it is graphic and violent. When the man that she is seeing comes back from going to pick up food forces the rapist to flee. The rapist left her ten crisp one-hundred dollar bills on her coffee table. The woman refuses to report the violent attack to the police because she sums it up as an "Occupational Hazard".

I read this 300 page collection slowly and didn't see any hope or beauty. I do understand and sympathize with the author knowing she was a victim of sexual assault which is heartbreaking and the old saying goes write what you know. I can see the author is a strong writer and talented and many other reviews give all four and five star ratings. For me there has to be some redeeming qualities to some of the collection. I found these stories to be very depressing and I honestly can not say that I could recommend this book.

Thank you to Net Galley, Roxane Gay and Grove Press for sending me this digital copy for a fair and honest review.
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This is only my second book by Roxane Gay that I've read, but like the first book, I read it fast and almost addicted for more. It was a book of stories with strong women faced with hard circumstances or who simply knew what they wanted and didn't hold back. There was something wonderful about it as it was painful to read of abuse and rape due to the fact that it helped you see that there was strength in us all. Because there was nothing wrong with the strength, no matter what we're faced with.

I really do enjoy Gay's writing. She is able to bring such emotion and character in these short stories as she does with novels. It was creative and a good mix of realistic fiction to fantasy and magic mixed within it. Despite being about strong women, each story was unique even if they share some general themes such as twins and miscarriages.

Roxane Gay is an author who is revered for her novel An Untamed State, as well as her essay collection Bad Feminist. This is her first major short story collection and it is just as powerful as her other writing.

These stories feature women in a variety of situations, but each one of them is dark and heart-wrenching. The first follows a pair of sisters united by childhood trauma and willing to do whatever is necessary for their sibling's safety and well-being. The title story is one the most powerful, as we see one woman's life through tiny vignettes as she makes a life for herself, protects herself with anger and exercise and car keys, and raises her son. Our unnamed protagonist is described as loose, frigid, and crazy at various points and there is an unavoidable feeling that she is fighting a battle she cannot win.

Some have a touch of magical realism, like the story of a woman who is followed by water wherever she goes. Others are all reality; in Florida, Gay takes us behind the closed doors of an exclusive gated community where the long-time residents try to hold onto their power and prestige, a new resident wonders if she will ever belong, and a fitness instructor pretends she isn't bothered by the way the residents treat her.

These tales are dark and violent and full of sex and anger and loss. The women in these stories are not necessarily difficult by nature; many of them become "difficult" because of the traumas they have encountered. Short story collections can often by uneven, but this one is incredible from the first story to the last page.


Difficult Women
By Roxane Gay
Grove Press January 2017
260 pages
Read via Netgalley

If Roxane Gay writes it, I will buy it. That's just a given. Ever since I read The Untamed State (seriously AMAZING book), I have loved her writing. I have no idea how she has three books coming out this year. I think she must be some kind of wizard or something.

To be honest, I had zero idea what this book was about before getting it. I just saw Roxane Gay's name and hit the request button. This book is a collection of short stories and like the title suggests, all the main characters are difficult women. And by difficult, I mean flawed. They are all flawed, but dammit they are also incredibly relatable and lovable. There are so many women represented here, women from different social classes, women of different sexual orientations, women of different races. There are women who are incredibly privileged and women who have been through incredible amounts of trauma. There were probably one or two stories that I didn't care too much for, but most of the stories were incredibly emotional and heartfelt and so well written. I absolutely adore this author's writing and this book did not disappoint. Highly recommended!

CW: I think every story in this is about either sexual assault or miscarriage...maybe not every but definitely most of them

Roxane Gay is a wonderful, powerful writer, of course, and I was so looking forward to reading this book! I...won't say I enjoyed reading this, exactly, since most of the stories are pretty heavy. But I appreciated the weight of her words and the resonance I felt with these fictional difficult women, for all their struggles and small victories (and large ones)

ps I know not to judge a book by what I wish it was, rather than what it actually is, but also....I hope she does another essay collection soon b/c that is my true jam

Like most short story collections, some stories were more compelling than others. Violence by misogynistic men towards masochist women was the major theme of the book. I didn’t find anything empowering in this collection, it was largely very depressing with a few touches of dark humour.

I didn't get this downloaded in time to read it from Netgalley but so badly wanted to read it that I made sure I got my hands on a copy. I'd heard nothing but high praise about Gayle so expectations were high. I was not disappointed .I don't read a lot if short story collections because they often seem so uneven. Bay does not fail at maintaining quality throughout and surprises with unique storytelling. What is not a surprise is Gay's unceasing fight for women, here all "difficult" women . She makes me proud to be one of them!

My final book of 2016.

Disclaimer: I fucking love Roxane Gay. It's basically a given that I would love Difficult Women. I'll try not to gush too much.

Difficult Women showcases all those different ways we women are "difficult". We fall in love, we fall out of love. We are fragile, we are strong. We are our own person, sometimes we depend on others. We demand respect. We are smart, we make poor decisions. Sometimes we hurt, sometimes we ask others to hurt us. We are people, real people, and that makes us difficult because we take up space.

The stories contained within Difficult Women are raw, searing, brutal gut-punches. Roxane Gay has delivered another powerhouse, but longer, collection of stories. These stories are populated by even more strong, bent-but-not-broken women who stand proudly by their older counterparts in Ayiti.

Personally, I loved the stories without fantastical elements best but that's just me. The amount that I love "North Country" more than "Requiem for a Glass Heart" is negligible, like the width of a human hair. "I am a Knife" just burns off the page. These stories are not easy and Roxane follows through with all her punches (that's a little bit of pun since one of the stories concerns a fight club for women). Yes, racism, rape, grief, faithlessness, pain, and abandonment are hard to read but that makes these stories so human. These women aren't decorative, they're real. They live and breathe and hurt and hope.

Go out and put this in your eyeballs now.

A collection of short stories about women! and people around them like Men, husbands, boyfriends, fathers, neighbours, babies and strangers. Every story showed a different edge of women, modern women. Women abused, women in despair, women in love, women who are mothers, women grieving, women lost and so on.

The story which just stuck in my throat was "I will follow you", I was holding back my tears and it was the first one in the book !
“Our parents asked Carolina why she jumped into the van instead of running for help. She said, “I couldn’t leave my sister alone.”

"The Sacrifice of Darkness" was also a good one, which was like a magical realism and very quiet and calm and lovely. And so was "Requiem for a Glass Heart".

"Difficult Women", the title short story was also a good one and went inside the thoughts of different women, crazy, loose, frigid, mothers!

"Florida" was the longest and one with different but a bit connected to each other about the people in a gated community.

Where as infidelity was the main topic in "In Break All the Way Down","The Mark of Cain" or "Bone Density", racism was tackled in "La Negra Blanca" and "North Country".

This book was a complete roller coaster of emotions and left me raw :(
I am new to Roxane gay's writing but her writing is a powerful one. She can show the outrage and kindness in a woman's heart together. She didn't leave even a tiny emotion that is felt by women around the world I guess. Loved her style.

Happy Reading !

There is no question that this author can write and write well, and that I am the outlier so far in many reviews. These stories were grim, women placed in difficult situations, women treated with little kindness, many seemed to just accept their lives would be like this. Hopelessness, despair, women in many different situations, many occupations. Some were more fantastical and I found these a welcome relief. These may be realistic, thankfully I don't know, maybe these are true depictions of some women's lives and probably are, but I finished these, and will admit to skipping around, glad they are not representative of mine.

First, thank you to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for the ARC, which I received in exchange for my honest review.

Although I'm not generally drawn to short stories and anthologies, I'm a huge fan of Roxane Gay's work, so Difficult Women was eagerly anticipated. And it did not disappoint - Difficult Women is just as painful and beautiful to read as Gay's other works. The stories are united around common themes, including pregnancy, loss, love, and twins. The theme of twins in particular, while it could easily be a bit obvious, provides a lovely and useful lens to explore the concept of self and other. It was easy to imagine the ways in which these various stories could have been connected, as the thematic elements were so heavy, but I found that to be a positive. The most heartbreaking story by far is the very last, which given what I have learned about Roxane Gay's history may have been strongly autobiographical.

Overall, definitely recommended.

After reading this fabulous book, I interviewed Roxane:

https://chireviewofbooks.com/2017/01/03/difficult-women-an-interview-with-roxane-gay/

I think this falls under "not for me". I had a hard time reading the stories about abusive relationships, so I ended up not finishing it.

Roxane Gay is really a delight to read, and this book gives a feeling of her thought process as well as an insight into how she is so prolific - so many ideas, not all fleshed out, but they could be. I really enjoyed reading this as a tool to keep me thinking as much as to enjoy the literature itself. Some of the stories are so short as to almost be vignettes, but it gives the reader a feeling for the breadth of range that Gay can do.

Roxane Gay describes the striking contradictions and stark realities of being female in the world today. These stories are all very different, but they all illustrate the irony of the title of this collection, as each woman describes the difficulties of being a woman. I’m not usually a fan of short stories, but these are worth the read both in terms of subject matter and the precise, evocative prose that they contain. I have Gay’s An Untamed State waiting unread on my shelf, and I now cannot wait to read it.

This book was provided to me by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

The first story in this collection, I Will Follow You, hits you with a wallop. It Lets you know this is not a collection of happy, go lucky stories to provide you an escape. However, this is a collection of truth, everyone one of these stories digs deep into real life and the complexities we find there. These are real women and men, warts and all. Some of these stories have a fantastical element, but Gay is able to still have them relay the true life essence underneath. Be warned this is not a collection to read if you have any kind of triggers, but if you are like me and like to read stories that connect you to the characters and feel, I highly recommend this book. (I received a copy of this book from the publisher for an honest review.)