Why I Don't Write

Praise

“A winning blend of emotional intensity, capricious playfulness and keen-eyed observation.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Tender, precise, emotional, insightful and funny.”—Julianne Moore

“Why I Don’t Write: And Other Stories, [Minot’s] first in some thirty years, showcases her versatility. Its ten stories range from mainstream to experimental, with sundry stops in between. . . . She has an unmistakable knack for distilling things, and gorgeously, at that. . . . Taken as a whole, Minot’s collection is, by turns, spiky and intimate, adventurous, stark and lyrical. . . . Few story collections shine as brightly.”—Portland Press Herald (Maine)

“Why I Don’t Write is a quiet collection, but it is not a halting or timid one. Minot still has a poet’s instinct for the surprising volta, the striking image, the bracing final line. After thirty years away from the short story, it is good to have her back, clear-eyed and fearless as ever, whispering difficult truths and ambiguities that a less assured writer would feel compelled to shout.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Susan Minot is an author well reputed for the purity and terseness of her prose exhibited over a career of more than three decades. Her latest book, a collection of ten stories is no exception. . . . Minot excels in description of people and places. . . . [A] rewarding read.”—New York Journal of Books

“[Why I Don’t Write] is strikingly visual. Here, the light is often white, people’s heads are bullet-shaped, and the littered car of a scoundrel professor is a fish tank. At their best, the sentences are frozen frames peering at the reader, as the reader peers back, peeling new information with each read. . . . [These stories] spill with luscious sentences that scintillate.”—Chicago Review of Books

“[Minot’s] gift is for illuminating revelatory moments in characters’ lives. . . . Throughout, Minot is keenly aware of how men hurt women—as well as how women sabotage themselves.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Minot . . . finds hints of violence, grief, and trauma in her characters’ interior lives in this precise, shimmering collection.”—Publishers Weekly