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by Naomi Wood
For fans of American Housewife and the work of Lily King, a provocative, razor-sharp, and riotously entertaining story collection exploring the dark side of family and femininity.
In my life, I had always been a good woman; controlling what it was that I wanted. But recently, I had started to notice my bad energy, and I began to follow it, wondering where it would take me ...
A woman has an unexpected outburst at a corporate therapy session for working mothers. A couple find some long-overdue time to rekindle their relationship and make an ill-advised home movie. A pregnant film director plots revenge on the actress who betrayed her. An ex-wife deliberately causes conflict at her ex-husband's wedding.
This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things illuminates the lives of malicious, subversive, and untamed women. Exploring failed sisterhood, dubious parenting, and the dark side of modern love, this powerful and funny collection exposes how society wants women to behave, and shows what happens when they refuse.
"Hints of consequential drama suffuse most of the stories, and the characters are deliciously complex, but too often the entries end abruptly. Ultimately, this one's a bit underwhelming." —Publishers Weekly
"Wood's perceptive, funny writing and her characters, concerned about loving both their jobs and their children too much even as they worry their kids won't have a world to live in, make for a winning addition to recent, taboo-embracing motherhood fiction like Rachel Yoder's Nightbitch and Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy." —Booklist
"Wickedly entertaining....Wood brings a thrilling focus to mothers rekindling sex lives, punishing former lovers, and navigating corporate dynamics while rejecting the confines of the society-sanctioned roles they are expected to play." —Shelf Awareness
"A socially astute collection about the pleasures and perils of motherhood… a deft account of the huge toll of trying to have everything. A must-read for working mothers—for whom reading might be a luxury they can't afford." —Kirkus Reviews
"It's a bracing pleasure to spend time with the fierce women in Naomi Wood's This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things. These stories are hilarious and unapologetic, reckoning with ambition, sex, and climate change. I loved this book." —Amanda Eyre Ward, New York Times bestselling author of Loves & Liars
"I love this collection! Every story is glorious—full of dark mischief, so funny and unexpected and original." —Emma Healey, author of Elizabeth Is Missing
"Humane and very funny…[on] our emotional and intellectual storms, and the generosity we are capable of that will keep us all afloat." —Jessie Burton, author of The Miniaturist
This information about This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Naomi Wood was born in 1983 and lives in London. She studied at Cambridge and at UEA for her MA in Creative Writing. Originally from York, she has gone on to live in Hong Kong, Paris and Washington DC. She is the author of The Godless Boys and Mrs. Hemingway.
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