Five Tuesdays in Winter

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In "Mansard," Audrey's unexpected connection with her friend Frances's father, Ben, complicates her understanding of herself. Ben both reminds her of her late father, and makes her realize the depth of her longings and fears. I liked all ten stories, some more than others, of course. “Waiting for Charlie,” about a man visiting his comatose granddaughter, stole my heart. Another favorite is “Hotel Seattle,” about a gay college kid who has a secret crush on his straight roommate and later gets to catch up with him. I just realized I could keep naming favorites; god, talk about poignant! All of them! They made me pause and think. One story, “Mansard,” sent me to Google to find out what a mansard roof is. I got lost in the pictures! I always love it when a story teaches me a little thing or two.

I read this collection of short stories by Lily King because I had read and generally liked three other books by the author, and two close friends told me they liked it, one reviewing it here. My reception of the book is somewhat complicated by the fact that 1) I am reading classic Chekhov and Tolstoy stories with the help of George Saunders, and 2) I was simultaneously reading Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got HIs Gun, certainly one of the most brutal anti-war books of all time, a book I had to put down from time to time. Then--no fault of Lily King, of course--her book of mostly East coast stories of seeming privilege, set decades ago, felt almost escapist by comparison. I had to change to Trumbo after every story! Help! I need picture books for a week! Though most of these stories have a dark undercurrent and are frequently centered around the falling out or otherwise absence of love, this collection resonates overall as a heartwarming book. Stories like Dordogne and especially the title story are really adorable and hopeful, while even bleak stories like Timeline or North Sea have that bittersweet bite that that fills you instead of empties you because these people are processing grief and earnestly trying to make the best of it. Waiting For Charlie is one of the heavier stories, with a grandfather watching over his granddaughter in a hospital and what at first seems like impotent rage against life unwravels into moving reflection and revelation. Five Tuesdays in Winter is a moody, indie romcom film waiting to happen with a cusp-of-adolescence daughter playing subtle matchmaker between her bookstore owner father, who is best summed up by his ex-wife’s complaint that ‘ the most emotion he'd ever shown her had been during a heated debate about her use of a comma in a note she'd left him about grocery shopping,’ and his, hip 30something employee going through turbulent times. There is a real heart and occasional playfulness to this collection that makes it difficult to put down. Romance isn’t the point for Casey. Love is the gravy; words are the filet. Finding a way to build a life around work she loves, finding a way to support herself as a writer — this is the line connecting all three corners of the love triangle at the heart of this novel.”— New York Times Book Review, Group Text Book Club the story of someone who used to be a waitress at a fancy restaurant in cambridge, mass...fine i'm reading this as a sequel to writers and lovers.In her debut short story collection, King – the author of five highly acclaimed novels – delivers tales of adolescent self-discovery, parenthood, love, desire and grief. A teenage babysitter develops an unhealthy crush on her boss’s married son with emotionally devastating results. A bookshop owner struggles to articulate his feelings for his employee. And a teenage boy spends the summer with a pair of college students after his father’s failed suicide attempt. Intimate and revealing, this is an unflinchingly honest and insightful collection. The Treeline: The Last Forest and the Future of Life on Earth Three woman who join together to rent a large space along the beach in Los Angeles for their stores—a gift shop, a bakery, and a bookstore—become fast friends as they each experience the highs, and lows, of love. This is a truly wonderful collection of ten short stories that focus on the shifts that happen when transitioning from one phase of life to another. King has a great gift when it comes to depicting emotional movements, the slight, subtle vibrations that hum and change when people interact, the certainties and insecrurities that know no logical explanations, but have their own tangible realities. As in every collection, not all stories are brilliant, but none of these stories are truly weak. I thought “South,” which takes place in a car, and stars a mom and her two kids, had a little point-of-view problem, and I didn’t know the age of the kids, which I didn’t love—but still, the story was a good one. The one I was least fond of was the title story, “Five Tuesdays in Winter.” It was about a curmudgeonly man who owns a bookstore and has a crush on a younger woman. I’m sorry, but the subject matter has been done a million times (grumpy old man chasing after a sweet young thing) and I hate the whole idea of it. Sure, King has the tone and the language to make it interesting, and hell, it’s set in a bookstore, which is such a draw—but nah, not for me. The ten stories in this book take place generations and oceans apart—from Germany to Seattle, from the early 1950s to the late 1980s—and center a wide variety of main characters, yet the collection feels deeply cohesive. What common threads link them? What themes recur? Why do you think King chose to group these stories together? How do you see them in conversation with one another?

Marie-Claude becomes frustrated when Flo corrects her on the details of her “Austrian ghost story.” She realizes her ex-husband must have told Flo the story, but left out a detail key to Marie-Claude’s experience. Have you ever felt that one of your own experiences or stories was co-opted by someone else after you shared it? Are there family stories in your life that you feel a sense of ownership over, even if you were not there to experience them?Truth to be told, this book is not really my favourite. I found it a bit challenging to finish it since the author went to a great length in conveying each character's daily interminable dread. It took a lot of mental capacity to comprehend everyone's stories. Not to mention, despite the tenderness, these anthologies are also dark, complex and fraught with drama. A good short story, it is said, is a world onto itself. If so, then Lily King has created a galaxy.