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A review by broro117
Games and Rituals by Katherine Heiny
2.0
The blurb for this collection says it contains "11 glittering stories of love in all its forms," but I'm pretty sure it meant to say "stories of infidelity in all its forms."
As someone who's still healing from having been cheated on, I'm very tired of cheating being used as a plot point — and it's way, way overused here. I'm talking nearly every single story. It's like Katherine Heiny couldn't possibly think of any other big dramatic thing that could happen in someone's love life. It's like she had a big red button labeled "CHEAT" beside her while she was writing and she slammed her fist down on it like 27 times while writing these stories.
One story was so triggering for me and my personal experience with betrayal that it made me feel sick to my stomach and I had to actively regulate my emotions afterward. And what's worse, many of these stories read as though they're glorifying the affairs to an extent. It seems like Heiny is asking her readers to feel charitable for these selfish assholes, but I didn't feel an ounce of charity toward any of them because why would I??
Also, this book could have easily been titled Men Are Scum. There are maybe two decent men to be found among all these stories. The rest are straight-up terrible, skeezy, predatory dirtbags. They're all either cheating on their spouses or preying on teenage girls. If I'm not mistaken, the last story tries to make us feel some amount of sympathy toward a guy in his late 30s who married a girl fresh out of high school who also worked in his store as a high schooler??? Don't think I will, thanks.
And on that note, there are several instances of much older men taking advantage of teenage girls that are all just quickly glossed over. Like in 11 stories/218 pages, this happens four or five times. Weird choice.
A lot of the female characters are encoded with a lot of "not like other girls" BS, particularly the mistresses, while the wives are depicted as frumpy, nagging shrews. Again, weird choice by a woman writer. Don't we have plenty (read: way too fucking much) of that from male authors?
Aside from all that, I'm just not sure many of these stories had anything much to say, and they were full of some of the most bizarre, nonsensical similes/metaphors I've ever read.
Giving it two stars because I somewhat enjoyed parts of "Chicken-Flavored and Lemon-Scented," "CobRa," and "Pandemic Behavior," and the ending of "Bridesmaid, Revisited" was probably the strongest in the collection.
As someone who's still healing from having been cheated on, I'm very tired of cheating being used as a plot point — and it's way, way overused here. I'm talking nearly every single story. It's like Katherine Heiny couldn't possibly think of any other big dramatic thing that could happen in someone's love life. It's like she had a big red button labeled "CHEAT" beside her while she was writing and she slammed her fist down on it like 27 times while writing these stories.
One story was so triggering for me and my personal experience with betrayal that it made me feel sick to my stomach and I had to actively regulate my emotions afterward. And what's worse, many of these stories read as though they're glorifying the affairs to an extent. It seems like Heiny is asking her readers to feel charitable for these selfish assholes, but I didn't feel an ounce of charity toward any of them because why would I??
Also, this book could have easily been titled Men Are Scum. There are maybe two decent men to be found among all these stories. The rest are straight-up terrible, skeezy, predatory dirtbags. They're all either cheating on their spouses or preying on teenage girls. If I'm not mistaken, the last story tries to make us feel some amount of sympathy toward a guy in his late 30s who married a girl fresh out of high school who also worked in his store as a high schooler??? Don't think I will, thanks.
And on that note, there are several instances of much older men taking advantage of teenage girls that are all just quickly glossed over. Like in 11 stories/218 pages, this happens four or five times. Weird choice.
A lot of the female characters are encoded with a lot of "not like other girls" BS, particularly the mistresses, while the wives are depicted as frumpy, nagging shrews. Again, weird choice by a woman writer. Don't we have plenty (read: way too fucking much) of that from male authors?
Aside from all that, I'm just not sure many of these stories had anything much to say, and they were full of some of the most bizarre, nonsensical similes/metaphors I've ever read.
Giving it two stars because I somewhat enjoyed parts of "Chicken-Flavored and Lemon-Scented," "CobRa," and "Pandemic Behavior," and the ending of "Bridesmaid, Revisited" was probably the strongest in the collection.