Why I Don't Write cover art

Why I Don't Write

And Other Stories

Preview

Get 30 days of Standard free

£5.99/mo after trial. Cancel monthly.
Try for £0.00
More purchase options

Why I Don't Write

By: Susan Minot
Narrated by: Alex McKenna, Kristen Sieh, Andrew Eiden
Try for £0.00

£5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for £12.59

Buy Now for £12.59

About this listen

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • A “clear-eyed and fearless” (The New York Times Book Review) collection of ten short stories from the award-winning author of Evening

“Tender, precise, emotional, insightful, and funny.”—JULIANNE MOORE
 
A writer dryly catalogs the myriad reasons she cannot write; an artist bicycles through a protest encampment in lower Manhattan and ruminates on an elusive lover; an old woman on her deathbed calls out for a man other than her husband; a hapless fifteen-year-old boy finds himself in sexual peril; two young people in the 1990s fall helplessly in love, then bicker just as helplessly, tortured by jealousy and mistrust.
 
In each of these stories Susan Minot explores the difficult geometry of human relations, the lure of love and physical desire, and the lifelong quest for meaning and connection. Her characters are all searching for truth, in feeling and in action, as societal norms are upended and justice and coherence flounder.
 
Urgent and immediate, stunningly observed, deeply felt, and gorgeously written, the stories in Why I Don't Write showcase an author at the top of her form.

“Intimate, adventurous, stark and lyrical . . . Few short story collections shine as brightly.”—Portland Press-Herald
Anthologies & Short Stories Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Short Stories Women's Fiction

Critic reviews

"Searing... Minot's lyricism is all her own... Minot still has a poet’s instinct for the surprising volta, the striking image, the bracing final line. After 30 years away from the short story, it is good to have her back, cleareyed and fearless as ever, whispering difficult truths and ambiguities that a less assured writer would feel compelled to shout."
--The New York Times

"Sterling... Pristine... fully formed, often erotic, gorgeous, and searing.,.Minot isexceptionally attuned to forces intimate and social, and her gift for potent distillation yields storiesthat are stunning in every sense of the word."
--Booklist
No reviews yet