Far From Brooklyn

“Single, Carefree, Mellow,” by Katherine Heiny

This a collection of stories that owes ever so much to Laurie Colwin, an author I really enjoy and one who died young, so who could complain about a new Colwin(esque) volume of stories?

Like Colwin, Heiny tells stories about adultery, and specifically about relatively guiltlessly enjoyed adultery. In this Colwinesque world, adulterous behavior is roughly as shameful as, say, plucking a flower in a public park, or remaining two hours in a one-hour parking zone. None of the adulteries result in a reckoning of any sort for her narrators and protagonists (all women, if I recall correctly). One of the married men partaking in the adultery is in precarious marriage because of the activity, but that’s about the extent of the ramifications in this collection.

It’s fun, it’s flossy, it’s a bit repetitive. Even Laurie Colwin could be a bit flossy and repetitive, so okay. On the other hand, Colwin did it first, and I don’t think Heiny advances the form at all.

Heiny has a good eye for detail. But a lot of these details have to do with the trivia of day-to-day life, and for some reason I think less of the stories for that reason. Sometimes the trivia is the whole point–there is an entire story about the vicissitudes of throwing a child’s birthday party. Occasionally, though, Heiny throws something that catches you by surprise. En route to a tryst, a woman relishes her single-minded horniness, and thinks to herself, “this is what it must feel like to be a man.” That’s good!

Photo credit: Kinga Howard
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