A review by lucyduller
Games and Rituals by Katherine Heiny

emotional reflective sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This is a short story collection I’ve had gathering dust on my shelf for about a year, possibly even longer. 
 
There are eleven short stories in this book by Katherine Heiny, the first book I’ve read by her. 
 
I am usually quite keen on short stories as they can feel like vignettes into different lives and stories. I found it hard to get stuck into this one, I really wanted to lose myself in a book about one story and the first two stories I found boring, so it sat on my bedside table for a few weeks. 
 
However, there are some real gems in this book. My particular favourites were 
  • Twist and Shout
  • Turn Back, Turn Back
  • 561


 
Twist and Shout is a story about a woman who now has to look after her aging father and starts with him eating his hearing aid because he thinks its a cashew. She resents her father as they have very different political views, he is a Fox News watching climate change denier, and she is not. However, the last page is on the third slide and it was so special. 


 
Turn Back, Turn Back took me on a rollercoaster and I think was my favourite story out of all of them. It’s about mother discovering her husband’s affair by her daughter’s reaction to a fairytale. It felt like I was right there with her. 


 
561 is about a woman having to bond with her husband’s ex-wife, and how they had spent some significant life moments with one another, despite hating each other. 


 
I loved how all of the stories had interweaving themes and links and you could probably draw a diagram linking them all. Overall, they were good stories, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it to everyone. 
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