Show Don't Tell
  • Published: 25 February 2025
  • ISBN: 9781529925906
  • Imprint: Doubleday
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $38.00

Show Don't Tell

Formats & editions
Tr. Paperback
25 Feb 2025
Hardback
27 Mar 2025
EBook
27 Feb 2025
Audiobook
27 Feb 2025
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Dazzling new story collection from the prize-nominated Sunday Times bestselling author of Romantic Comedy, American Wife and You Think It, I'll Say It,

YOUR NEXT READ FROM THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR of ROMANTIC COMEDY, PREP and AMERICAN WIFE

'Sittenfeld is in a league of her own' Guardian

'One of my favourite authors' KATE ATKINSON

'Anything Sittenfeld writes, we'll read' People

'No-one else writes with such precision and amusement' Red Magazine
______
Razor-sharp, glittering tales exploring marriage, fame and female friendship, from the Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author of Romantic Comedy and American Wife.

In this compulsive collection of twelve witty stories, Sittenfeld shows why she’s as beloved for her short fiction as she is for her novels, as she conjures up characters so real that they seem like old friends.

In ‘The Patron Saints of Middle Age,’ a woman visits two friends she hasn’t seen since her divorce. In ‘A for Alone,’ a married artist embarks on a project intended to disprove the so-called Mike Pence Rule, which suggests that women and men can’t spend time alone together without lusting after each other. And in ‘Lost but Not Forgotten,’ Sittenfeld gives readers of her novel Prep a new window into the world of her beloved character Lee Fiora, decades later, when Lee attends an awkward school reunion.

Witty, confronting and full of tenderness, Sittenfeld peels back layer after layer of our inner lives, keeping us riveted to the page with her utterly distinctive voice.

READERS CAN'T GET ENOUGH OF CURTIS SITTENFELD:

'Small windows into modern life and as such highly entertaining. Curtis, you're a star!' *****

'Sittenfeld understands women so well, it’s like having someone look straight into your soul'*****

'Devoured! You'll recognise yourself and others in these pages' *****
  • Published: 25 February 2025
  • ISBN: 9781529925906
  • Imprint: Doubleday
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $38.00
Categories:

About the author

Curtis Sittenfeld

Curtis Sittenfeld pulls no punches in her scathing and hilarious indictments of the American middle classes. Her Sunday Times bestselling novel American Wife was longlisted for the Orange Prize, as was her debut novel Prep. Her other books include The Man of My Dreams, Sisterland, Eligible, the acclaimed short story collection You Think It, I’ll Say It and her latest novel Rodham. Her stories have appeared in the New Yorker, Esquire, Oprah Magazine and the New York Times magazine. Sittenfeld is also the guest editor for the 2020 Best American Short Stories anthology. She lives with her family in the American Mid-West. Follow her on Twitter @CSittenfeld

portrait photo of Curtis Sittenfeld

Also by Curtis Sittenfeld

Prep
You Think It, I'll Say It
Romantic Comedy
Help Yourself
Rodham
Sisterland
The Man of My Dreams
See all

Praise for Show Don't Tell

Sittenfeld zooms in on urban Midwesterners dealing with middle-aged disillusions in this witty story collection…In one sparkling comedy of manners after another, the author documents with a clear and affectionate eye how tiny prejudices and blind spots lead her protagonists astray. These stories entertain and unsettle in equal measure.

Publishers Weekly

[Sittenfeld's] perfectly contained stories are a joy for their realistically and mundanely fractured characters, moral ambiguities, movingly related moments, and the message that even the smallest tale offers lessons to uncover.

Booklist, starred review

Curtis Sittenfeld is one of America’s best working novelists . . . expect her usual, startlingly intelligent treatment of emotions and relationships

GQ

Curtis Sittenfeld’s fiction is perennially inhale-able: smart, barbed, and wickedly funny. I can’t wait to read her latest collection. I look forward to being delighted and destabilized

LIT HUB

Good as Curtis Sittenfeld’s novels are (among them Prep, American Wife, Romantic Comedy), fans of hers had reason to think, upon the arrival of her first collection in 2019, that her short stories were even better. These were topical, witty, and subversively sexy stories about jealousy, desire, and domestic and professional turmoil. And now comes her latest collection, Show Don’t Tell, a hugely entertaining and formidably intelligent tour through the psyche of mostly middle-aged mothers (and a few fathers), moderately content and successful and still yearning for more. Sittenfeld’s prose has astonishing ease, and her fleet, brisk dialogue sparkles with humor and mischief

VOGUE

Sittenfeld’s observations in her writing are always clever, and this new collection of short fiction includes a tale about the main character in Prep, who visits her boarding school decades later for an alumni reunion

THE MILLIONS

[Sittenfeld] tackles the short story with emotional heft, holding up a mirror to the way we live our lives

RED

A dazzling short story collection exploring marriage and female friendship with typical razor sharp wit

COUNTRY & TOWNHOUSE

These gems from the Romantic Comedy author ... cover everything from professional jealousy to the joy of long-term female friendships

GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

A cohesive, often dryly funny, occasionally heartbreaking set of stories, and a satisfying report from the front lines of middle age.

BookPage

You won't be able to put down Curtis Sittenfeld's second short story collection. Sittenfeld's mastery of a comedy manners remains on display in Show Don't Tell

Town & Country
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