Review Praise for Difficult Women: “The characters who inhabit Difficult Women . . . aren’t just characters. They are our mothers, sisters and partners. They are human. They are us.”―USA Today (4/4 stars) “Sharp, poignant and daring . . . The stories here are myriad, inviting comparisons to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Toni Morrison and Salman Rushdie.”―Houston Chronicle “There’s a distinct echo of Angela Carter or Helen Oyeyemi at play; dark fables and twisted morality tales sit alongside the contemporary and the realistic . . . It feels like the book we have been waiting for Gay to write.”―Los Angeles Times “Gay has fun with these ladies . . . With Difficult Women, you really have no idea what’s going to happen next.”―New York Times Book Review “Because Gay is such a vivid writer, her stories have a remarkable visual sweep . . . Gay writes of chances missed and unexpected joy, love gone awry or resurrected, and the slivers of hope that keep these fascinating women alive.”―Boston Globe “The language is stark yet meaty; it lives with you the way memories do, in the deepest crevices of the body and mind . . . powerful.”―Arizona Daily Sun “A master of the short story . . . A tribute not only to difficult women, but also to the circumstances that made them that way.”―BUST Magazine “Like Joyce Carol Oates’ Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? or Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, this is fiction pressed through a sieve, leaving only the canniest truths behind . . . Addictive, moving and risk-taking.”―San Francisco Chronicle “Roxane Gay, the acclaimed American essayist and novelist, charges from the gate in her debut collection of short fiction . . . These are the places I’m going to take you, Gay seems to be saying. Are you prepared? . . . Provocation operates on different levels in this collection. First on the level of theme―the presentation of female sexual desire, both masochistic and otherwise, is vigorous and forthright, the language refreshingly frank and graphic―then on the level of technique.”―The Globe and Mail (Canada) “I’m currently reading Difficult Women, by Roxane Gay, and I’m getting my life from it . . . Roxane Gay seems to have a knack for fearlessly telling the truth. Even in her fiction.”―Gabourey Sidibe, The New York Times Book Review (“By the Book”) “Gay’s signature dry wit and piercing psychological depth make every story mesmerizingly unusual and simply unforgettable.”―Harper’s Bazaar “In so many ways, Gay’s Difficult Women feel simultaneously fictitious and like they could (and probably do) live right down the street. Perhaps they even live inside of our coworkers, our friends, our sisters and ourselves . . . Gay’s writing is unparalleled.”―Forbes “Difficult Women . . . deftly and terrifyingly underscores the absurdity of a society tacitly ordered by skin color and the privileges accrued by those who have ended up at the winning end, circled and watched by those who have not . . . Gay peels it all back, exposing the raw, the enraged and the perversely beautiful.”―New Republic “Gay’s work is as varied as women’s experiences. Each story feels fresh and new, a blanket of snow you both want and don’t want to muddy with a footprint. Difficult Women . . . solidifies Gay’s place as one of the voices of our age.”―National Post (Canada) “Gay excels in her allowance for human complexity . . . One of the book’s greatest achievements is Gay’s psychological acuity.”―Washington Post “Writing that seems to cut to the bone . . . These stories of sisters and mothers and daughters and lovers are haunting, and their quiet voices linger . . . they draw you in.”―The Seattle Times “The stories, phenomenally powerful and beautifully written, demonstrate the threats so many women in reality face, but also how, whatever their situation, they have agency, resilience and identities away from stereotypes created and reinforced by men.”―The Guardian (UK) “Powerful, sometimes infuriating, often sad and always gentle . . . A wonderful and varied collection of stories, with a terrific range of subjects and emotions giving it just the right balance.”―Toronto Star (Canada) “The women in Difficult Women are all deliciously complex, and their relationships are just as multifaceted.”―Baltimore City Paper “Gay brings the powerful voice that flows through her work as a novelist and cultural critic to [these] 21 short stories . . . Gay’s ‘difficult women’ are unforgettable.”―BBC.com “Her pitch-perfect insights to these female archetypes are so Gay―candid, observant, concise, stirring.”―Ms. Magazine “Gay is at her best when merging vivid yet straightforward language with stories that contain an element of folklore . . . Refreshing yet intricate, in the vein of Clarence Major’s Chicago Heat and Other Stories.”―Library Journal (starred review) “Unequivocally excellent . . . roughly urgent and skillfully timeless . . . Gay’s voice is lyrical throughout, mesmeric and unflinching. This collection shocks, despairs and triumphs.”―Bookreporter “The emotional and interior lives of her difficult women are authentic and affecting.”―The Spinoff (New Zealand) “This collection begs for a slow, serious reading.”―Minneapolis Star Tribune “The titular subjects in the literary star’s short-story collection are strippers and engineers, participating in fight clubs and elite suburban dramas. Each one is compelling, thanks to Gay’s illuminating prose.”―Entertainment Weekly “A collection of short stories that will make your spine tingle with intrigue.”―Bustle.com “Intimate and powerful . . . an unforgettable story of modern American womanhood. A compelling collection that will stick with you long after you finish the last page.”―Bustle.com “Women’s lives have been Gay’s most consistent subject . . . In these stories, she writes fearlessly and with insight about love and power between men and women, about the horror of sexual violence and its inescapable aftershocks, about the fierce and flawed tenderness of mothers for their children.”―Tampa Bay Times “ A powerful collection of short stories about difficult, troubled, headstrong, and unconventional women . . . challenging, quirky, and memorable.”―Publishers Weekly “Incredible . . . These stories are so lovely the book is best parceled out into multiple readings, so the reader doesn’t miss the nuance and the dark beauty of each tale.”―Charleston Gazette-Mail Haunting and powerful stories which run the gamut between real and surreal . . . Rendered with great specificity and empathy, Gay’s characters are unforgettable―and certainly, in their own ways, are difficult women, but also real human beings in whom we may all find ourselves reflected.”―Buzzfeed “Astonishing, arresting, and staggering.”―Book Riot “The collection is often dark and disturbing, but also deeply empathetic . . . In her deliberate and often exquisite attention to detail, she crafts stories that will haunt the reader long after the book has been put away.”―Washington Independent Review of Books “Gay tells intimate, deep, wry tales . . . Be they writer, scientist, or stripper, Gay’s women suffer grave abuses, mourn unfathomable losses, love hard, and work harder.”―Booklist “Roxane Gay is a force . . . These are stories about women, in all of the difficult, glorious, inexplicable forms that we take.”―The Rumpus “Gay’s writing encompasses so much―simultaneously direct, funny, whipsmart, sometimes painful, and always thought-provoking.”―Chicago Review of Books “Unified in theme―the struggles of women claiming independence for themselves―but wide-ranging in conception and form . . . Gay is an admirable risk-taker in her exploration of women’s lives and new ways to tell their stories.”―Kirkus Reviews “Gay is a master of memoir, personal essay, creative nonfiction and lyrical prose, which gives her writing a smart, modern edge that’s hard to look away from.”―FUSE “[Gay’s] characters . . . aren’t superheroes, and they aren’t intimidating or ‘lethal.’ They are like us, whether they live in gated subdivisions, apartments or run-down houses with sagging ceilings. They . . . are haunted by painful memories of abuse and loss. Some are loved and some are lonely, although these categories are not mutually exclusive. They are horny. They are not nice. They are calloused and bruised and yet, somehow, they endure.”―Milwaukee Journal Sentinel “It is impossible to read Roxane Gay’s Difficult Women and not be chilled by its prescience . . . Gay is an engaging, beguiling storyteller who . . . captures the fragility of love and the awful mundaneness when relationships start to fail . . . One of the most important writers in contemporary English literature.”―Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) Read more About the Author Roxane Gay is the author of the novel An Untamed State; the essay collection Bad Feminist; and Ayiti, a multi-genre collection. She is at work on a memoir, Hunger, and a comic book in Marvel's Black Panther series. She splits her time between Indiana and Los Angeles. Read more
P**C
It's not an easy book, I'm afraid it may be put aside ...
Roxane Gay writes with a rawness that makes visceral the experience of many women - that their bodies are a battleground, sometimes acutely, but often on a day-to-dy basis as well. . Gay's female characters all have the same conflicted...I can't quite call it an attitude as it isn't a matter of thinking...relationship to sex - they are sexual beings, but feel a lot of shame about sex, yet rather than avoid it, they seek pounding, punishing, often demeaning sex. All this complicated by the intersectionality of gender and race. It's not an easy book, I'm afraid it may be put aside too soon by many b/c it's possible to dismiss the women as f___ed up. But these are women we should listen to, sit with, allow ourselves to get beyond the prickly exterior and experience the wildly beating hearst inside.
M**E
Good collection of stories.
If you look at the other reviews of this book, you'll see that there are quite a few negative ones. Those people, I think, based on their reviews, hoped for more from this book because they seem to think that books and stories need happy endings.The stories within this book don't generally have happy endings. Most of them don't have endings or even beginnings. A lot of them, Gay plops us into the middle of these women's lives with little to no explanation. You have to catch up. And that's ok. These seem to be to me more of short stories. They are peeks into the lives of many different women. Their lives are hard, often sad. I think it's a bit deeper than most actual situations or women actually read into their own lives, but they are generally very realistic situations. This book is full of tales of heart ache, sadness, emptiness, anger, love... The list goes on. Admittedly, some stories are a little harder to get through than others, but all in all, I'm very happy with my purchase, and I think others will be, too. Definitely a good pick to help me get back into reading the way I used to.
L**M
Leading the way for trauma writers of the next generation
I read Hunger before any of Dr. Roxane Gay’s other works. Knowing more about her life makes her stories more personal to me, as she writes her own trauma and life into these difficult women. Difficult Women is a hard read. At times I had to excuse myself to the restroom to make sure I did not vomit. But between the lines there is great humor and irony to be found in the world. Gay does not deny that there are some good men in the world, but the stories are not really about them, for once. There are no real “nice guys” and no simple women. They are written with the complexity I understand can seem raw in a world where such complex, real women are hard to come by on a page. Not to mention the fact that she touches on race and culture with grace and calculated anger. So much is to be learned from Gay’s works, but it takes work and grit. It will be worth every moment.
M**N
Powerful
A story in this collection is called "I Am a Knife" and that's what many of these stories feel like, knives. They're sharp and focused, the result of a writer controlling her (considerable) powers.There are multiple reviewers who are upset that this isn't more like a self-help book, a collection of helpful and inspiring stories to fill readers with hope or show women who are doing it all and succeeding on multiple levels. It seems so odd to fault powerful writing for what you had hoped it would be, even when that representation was never made. I would say that this isn't for everyone . . . and that's okay.
L**A
Soap opera, trash tv, dirty un-romance novel
The title is misleading and the book reads like trash television. This is the second book of Gay’s (the first being Bad Feminist-also misleading) that I stopped reading half way through because I felt it was an assault on my brain. With both of the books I half-read of Gay’s, I got a sense that she has limited real life experience and likely indulges in too much trashy reading and television which has warped her ability to write an authentic character. Much of the writing was cliche and lacking in depth or honesty. Roxane Gay is looking for the shock value to each story, which doesn’t have anything to do with being a voice for women. What’s missing is the heart and feeling of each of the characters and many of the stories are left on odd points that lack inspiration to contemplate the story or the people in it. Instead the reader will most likely want to scrub it from their mind.
E**S
Cautionary Tales of Women in the World
This collection of short stories spans a wide-ranging group of women in extreme circumstances. Magical realism, dystopic futures and going AWOL from relationships color the stories, some of which are reminiscent of Joyce Carol Oates in their darkness and perception.
J**T
Stories You Should Read
My favorite story would have to be Break Me All the Way Down; I also enjoyed the one with the red machine dismantling the sun; and also the couple where the wife laughed at the husband stepping out on the marriage. I'm a sucker for a love story found in dark places :/. All of these stories were captivating and intriguing. Some short, some long--they all make me want to read more short stories from Roxane. I recommend this book for anyone interested.
S**R
Roxanne Gay is A WRITER!
Seriously, when I hear the word “writer” I now think of Roxanne Gay the same way I’d think of Hemingway when I’d hear the word years ago- she is of that caliber IMO. I typically don’t get into short stories, but I devoured this and I am a fan. Gay has a distinct voice that I believe will resonate with readers for years to come.
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