Single, Carefree, Mellow: Stories

"Katherine Heiny’s wonderful, heartwarming-without-being-soppy novels combine domestic drama, gentle humour and skewering social comedy, so I was pleased to discover that she published a short story collection early in her career (well, mid-way through an interrupted career ) gathering together some of the stories that first made her name. Single, Mellow, Carefree features rather a lot of adultery—a preoccupation Heiny has linked to her husband’s career as a spy, and the lies such a job necessitates. (“He used to be under death threat from the K.G.B.,” as she once recalled. “Then they called one day and said they were over it.”) But the story I’ve picked out is a droll story about a mother frantically organising a children’s party, featuring an underwhelming clown, a misshapen cake, and the advances of an unsettlingly mature second grader. Also recommended: Games and Rituals by Katherine Heiny"