You Know You Want This by Kristen Roupenian

4 Stars

This is the highly anticipated short story collection by the author of the viral short story, “Cat Person” that was published in The New Yorker December 2017 during the cusp of the #MeToo revelations. We’ve all been waiting to see if that story was a fluke, wherein the author was somehow able to catch the moment of female anger at male privilege and bad behavior, or if this author really had a way of consistently capturing fireflies in a jar.

If I told you her short stories were about divorced moms and Peace Corps teachers in a foreign land, it would sounds like a boring collection of pretentious literary MFA stories, but there’s a dark underbelly to all of Roupenian’s stories–much like the dark underbelly of America that has been exposed in this recent election–and it gives a powerful pull to everything she writes.

At a recent interview in New York, she mentioned that Stephen King was one of her greatest influences, as well as Shirley Jackson, and you can really feel the darkness around the edges (and sometimes right in the middle) of these stories that are written in a surprisingly colloquial style that then surprises you with its bite.

The story that stayed with me the longest was “Bad Boy,” the opener, which starts as a weird threesome and devolves into something very different. “The Good Guy” is right up there with “Cat Person” as a contemporary dating cautionary tale that will leave a resonance long after you’ve finished reading it.

Roupenian is not a female Stephen King or a contemporary Shirley Jackson. I think her work reminds most of the early dark and powerful stories of Joyce Carol Oates.

Short story collections have never been my thing, and this is no exception. Some stories are better than others -- Cat Person is probably the best -- but mostly, as a collection, this failed to make me want to read on after the next one.

Roupenian has an interesting flair and I'm excited to see what she does next, but this? Ehhhh.

Another great read! You’ve never know I spent my entire weekend reading, would you?
So I was waiting for this to come out for ages, and then I got tired waiting and then I listened to a podcast where I didn’t really like the author’s voice and all I can say is I was wrong. The podcast meant nothing.
This girl has one of the most powerful voices around. All of these stories were so strong. Even the ones that didn’t start off all that strong, all suddenly, at some point in the story, lurched into something spellbinding. What a wordsmith! My favourite story was Good guy. It’s even better than Cat Person.
This is one to watch. She’s going places.

Really torn - 4 of the stories in this collection were truly awful, 3 just weren't very good, a couple were alright, and a few were the kind of honest and revealing that I would describe as sheer brilliance. I almost stopped listening to this collection after the first three, which were all so demoralizing and uninteresting that I attempted to return the book to Audible. (As an aside, the Audible narration on these was universally well done.) But for some unknown reason I kept listening, probably because I couldn't figure out how to return the book. Cat Person was the first good story in the collection, and still merits 5 stars from me; I also thought The Good Guy, The Matchbox Sign, and Biter were insightful and worth the time. Otherwise just skip this. Those four stories are the only reason I didn't give this one star.

I LOVED IT AAH

Maybe later.

Le iba a poner 3 estrellitas, pero la última historia me dejó un buen sabor de boca.

Lo estás deseando es un libro de historias extrañas, no podría decir que son terroríficas, o feas, pero definitivamente todas comparten un ambiente o una sensación similar, quizá de incomodidad, de cosas que desearíamos que hubieran terminado diferente.

Mención especial para “Cat Person” que, en mi opinión, es una historia corta con la que gran parte de las mujeres podemos sentirnos identificadas, para mí incluso describe bastante bien mis intentos de encajar en la heterosexualidad.

3.5
Con este libro no tengo idea de qué sentir. Está tan bien escrito y son relatos en los que piensas y te puedes identificar porque o te han pasado o has escuchado alguna historia similar. Son sumamente perturbadoras. Eso sí, muy adictivas. Es como esas cosas que te causan horror, pero simplemente no puedes dejar de verlas. Creo que justamente eso lo hace un libro tan bueno, por la habilidad que tiene la autora de transmitir justamente todas esas sensaciones incómodas, extrañas y desagradables.