"Gender Studies," the opening salvo of Curtis
Sittenfeld's mischievous story collection,
You Think It, I'll Say
It, centers on a jilted professor of women's history who hooks up
with her Trump-supporting airport shuttle driver.
You're a
moron, she thinks before picturing him performing oral sex on her.
She, like many in these stories, has a hilariously warped sense of herself and
the world around her. But what's bad for them and those in their orbit—like
the hapless husband in "A Regular Couple," whose new bride holds so
strong a grudge against a former classmate, it threatens to ruin their
honeymoon—is cathartic fun for us. In "The Prairie Wife," a
lesbian mom staves off domestic boredom by cyberstalking her ex-girlfriend, a
celebrity whose conservative (read: heterosexual) lifestyle is a cornerstone of
her brand. With a rage "like lust," the protagonist considers
toppling her ex's empire by outing her. Yet she also worries she's "frittering
away her life having vengeful thoughts about people from her past." Known
for such compassionately ironic novels as
Prep and
American Wife, Sittenfeld here
confirms an ability to mine the casual cruelties and quiet furies of the elite
for comic gold.
