Sad Grownups

Amy Stuber’s Sad Grownups is a brilliant collection. Each story—each page—surprises with detail both intriguing and unsparing. Stuber’s characters are complex and presented whole, which is a tough thing to do when you are writing short fiction. She examines loss, death, grief, parenthood, without sentimentality. It is that rare book which, when you come to the last page, makes you want to go back to the beginning and experience it once more. Sad Grownups deserves a wide readership.

Full disclaimer, I’m in the hospital right now, (unplanned stay,) so I have to read on my phone and my god that’s a tiny screen. Thank you to Stillhouse press for approving my arcs requests and keeping my mind busy, it’s priceless at the moment.
Obviously the title was the main draw to me, as I am indeed a very sad grownup (who isn’t in this economy?), I also love short stories cause they’re low commitment (especially if you like to read before bed), and I don’t read enough of them.

All the stories are individual but they do have a lot in common. Alice, Renee,
Frida, Heather and all the others, are at a point in their lives where they look back and reflect. Lots of talk about motherhood and wether to become a mother or not. Or how a relationship with a complicated mother can impact someone’s life years beyond childhood. Many of the stories also talk about girlhood and womanhood, what it means to be and become a woman (and we also go back to the motherhood theme). There are also men involved but there were not my focus, sorry lads.
Little women was probably my favourite, mostly because of this quote

This is what it means to be a woman in this world. Put a lot of justs in your sentences when talking to boys, to men, even if your idea is better; you don’t want. to look shrill or undermining. Say I’m sorry. Say it again while you’re looking down and then laughing but under your breath because not too loud, ever.

{ ARC REVIEW }

• Sad Grownups by Amy Stuber
• Short Stories, Literary Fiction, Women’s Fiction

Description:
A debut collection that explores American life in the shadow of climate crisis and late-stage capitalism. For those who’ve been sad and tried not to be, seventeen stories about the absurdity of searching for joy in a dying world.

My Thoughts:
Wow, did this make me feel weighted down, heavy with sadness and angst. But in a good way!

You know, like, you’re just trying to live your life, do all the right things in the right way at the right time, but don’t you feel sometimes like you could just slightly push your finger into someone talking to you and hope they might slip over a cliff’s edge??

Yeah…that’s this book. Intrusive thoughts, odd behavior, sadness, but also loads of empathy and wanting to understand the world, and those in it, better.

Stuber’s writing style is phenomenally unique and poetic. I thoroughly enjoyed it all. Short sentences contrast against long winded sentences that showcase the mind of a really messy and conflicted human stuck in thought and decision. Each short story reflects a different issue, putting life on display, utterly appalling and visceral.

I can’t look away. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️!

• Anticipated Pub Day: 10.08.24

Thank you to @stillhousepress and @NetGalley for sending an Advance Reader’s Copy for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

I enjoyed each story in this collection. I found the book to be entertaining from the beginning. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

A sharp collection of stories from an author as kind as she is funny (extremely).

Each story was unique and extremely well established. With short stories, I sometimes find myself blending them together in my mind. The wrong situations in the wrong settings, mixing up the husband's name with the co-worker's from 2 stories ago. Amy has put together 17 stories that each create an offbeat life of their own. This collection's brazen social commentary felt shrouded in sentiment - but in a good way. It's so sneakily a rollercoaster of emotions that you don't feel bombarded or bogged down by it, as is the case for me with some other collections. The book's description nails it, "For those who've been sad and tried not to be, seventeen stories about the absurdity of searching for joy in a dying world".

The large majority of them could be a lot edgier - but that's just for my taste.

Day Hike 4/5
Little Women 4/5
Dead Animals 5/5
Camp Heather 3.5/5
People's Parties 5/5
<b>Doctor Visit 6/5</b>
Cinema 4.5/5
Sad Grownups 4/5
More Fun in the New World 5/5
The Game 5/5
<b>Wizards of the Coast 6/5</b>
Edward Abbey Walks Into a Bar 3/5
Corvids and their Allies 5/5
<b>Dick Cheney is Not My Father 6/6 </b>(I mean c'mon, that title alone gets 5/5 in my book lmao)
Ghosts 4/5
Our Female Geniuses 4/5
The Last Summer 5/5

{Thank you bunches to NetGalley, Stillhouse Press & the incredibly cool Amy Stuber for the eARC in exchange for my honest review. Working on this one has especially been a pleasure!}

LOVED this. I think I was the perfect reader for this collection. I haven't read many short story collections (though I recently loved Bliss Montage) but overall I tend to deeply enjoy literary fiction, queer novels, themes of grief and loss, explorations of the current landscape of social media and influencer culture, writing and writers, and meta reflections on what a story is and does. This collection knocked all of that out of the park.

I think my favorite story in the collection, Little Women House, can shine a light on some of what I felt made the storytelling so strong. In this story, we are taken to a seemingly dystopian world (that has so much in common with our own I kept wondering if it really is just Earth in the 2020s) where four women play the parts of each of the Little Women from the original story for an audience of fans on social media... and also for a group of men that come to the house weekly. The flipping back and forth between in-character observations and glimpses of their lives before coming to the house was elegant and impactful, the ending was open and gorgeous, and I just felt so moved by the brief but poignant reflections on womanhood and performance.

I did feel the first half of the collection was a bit stronger overall than the second half — especially the first three stories, which I felt were all knockouts — but I remained really engaged throughout and found that the book earned five stars for me.

Sad Grownups by Amy Stuber is a well-written and varied collection of short stories. I would be interested to read anything this author does next.

Interesting collection of short stories. Social commentary and nostalgia. I'm indeed a sad Grown up looking for happiness in a weird and crazy world.

First, I want to thank #NetGalley #StillhousePress and #VictoryEditing for the advance PDF copy of this delightful collection. These seventeen stories were uniquely engaging and a number of them were downright mesmerizing. Some of the best I've read. Colorful characters navigating a diversity of situations and scenarios like parenting and aging, unrequited love and subsequent loss, grief, loss, and starting over. Notably, this author's use of small, surprising, and vivid details really brought the writing to life -- from dialog to descriptive imagery. I cannot include quotes with this review as it will be flagged when I try to post to Amazon, so I've quote-tweeted a number of these brilliant passages and moments on Twitter. I also had the pleasure of communicating directly with Amy Stuber via Twitter and got to tell her just how much I enjoyed the stories in her debut collection. Her talents and JOY for language and storytelling shines through in her writing and I wholeheartedly recommend this gem of a collection. Can't wait to read whatever is coming next!! Thank you, Amy.

I have been reading this short story collection over the last couple of weeks and I am somewhat bereft, I have finished them.
This was a really surprising collection, I don't know what I expected, I was drawn by the title but I certainly didn't expect to be as enchanted, engaged and entertained. Two of the stories were five star reads for me ( Little Women was my favourite) and I enjoyed all of the others. Great characters and some truly gorgeous writing on grief, parenting, love and life. I plan to buy a copy for myself as this is a collection I will return to and I know a couple of people who would really appreciate this book too, so its going on my christmas shopping list too.
Really looking forward to reading more from this author.

4-4.5 stars.

Beware, reader. Author Amy Stuber said this in an interview, "I would like to be more hopeful about it all, and every now and then I read about something, some technology, some company that cares, some government doing more, something that gives me hope that we may evade whatever worse version of disaster, but it’s hard to think that. I think the only way to move forward under these circumstances is to focus on small, joyful things each day, accumulating those things over a week and a month and a year." Many are feeling like this right now, so welcome to this highly recommended (by me) emotional support group.