A review by abbywdan
Fresh Complaint by Jeffrey Eugenides

5.0

Listen, am I ever going to give a Eugenides book fewer than five stars? No. [Looks back, realizes she gave Middlesex FOUR STARS and corrects that problem, since she has been thinking about Middlesex since reading Middlesex and has leant her paperback copy out at least three times and DOES expect it back every time, like an actual monster, which is really saying something since she only ever reads on Kindle now, almost. Realizes she also gave The Marriage Plot four stars, which was frankly a little generous, but she went to a reading and got a signed copy, so SHRUG.]

Somehow, like by barely reading books in my current life stage and never really reading magazines/journals, except for certain lengthly phases of keeping up with the New Yorker, to the detriment of all other consumption of the written word, I had managed to not read any of these stories in their previously-printed locations. The fact that they contain the seeds of some of the novels that I so love does not phase me. In fact, it makes me want to go back and re-read them, but I don't think that will actually happen.

Men are trash, Jeff knows it, these stories are great. I wish the title story had been a novel. That is all!