So Happy Together: The Very Particular Pleasure of Linked Stories

This stunning book is presented as a novel, but each chapter is told from the point of view of a different character, each of them someone from a Native community, and each of them with plans to travel to the Big Oakland Powwow. At first, it’s not clear that they’re connected at all, aside from their common destination. But as the narrative hurtles toward its end, the characters converging, all the disparate pieces fall into place in the most satisfying of ways.

I normally wouldn’t pick up a book like this — it’s the type of book often described as “quiet,” which is so not my jam — but I read it with my book club. Although I went in with low expectations (no shade to Strout), by the end, I was moved by this collection of 13 narratives, each of which bumped up against one singular woman in the community of Crosby, Maine. Olive looms larger in some chapters than in others but, taken together, she is shown to be someone with depth and layers…someone who is deemed difficult by others but who, when it comes down to it, is relatable as heck.

At its heart, Fiona and Jane is the story of a female friendship, with all of its ups and downs, its silences and estrangements, its small betrayals, and its moments of intimacy. What makes it unique is how it’s told through alternating points of view, each account landing the reader at a different point in these women’s lives. Even when the friendship itself feels tangential to what each woman happens to be struggling with at that moment, it hovers there at the periphery.

I just started reading this one and I’m already loving it. The nine stories that make up this collection give glimpses into the lives of four generations of characters, touching upon issues of faith, longing, love, vulnerability…all the secret pieces of women’s lives that make them who they are. I’m fascinated by stories in which faith and desire bump up against one another, causing internal conflict, so this promises to be a satisfying read.

Another one I recently started, Cake Time is billed as a novel-in-stories, each of them centered on a single female character. Leaping around in time, we see the protagonist float through life aimlessly, making terrible choices, letting her own curiosity and desire lead the way. There’s a purposelessness to this young woman’s story, yet these collections of random moments add up to a pretty eventful life.

Finally, in this story collection, readers are introduced to a rotating cast of Cambodian Americans — and their children — building a life for themselves in California. Even as each of these characters forges a unique path for themselves, they each carry with them the weight of a past marked by the Khmer Rouge genocide. This past drives their determination to create a new beginning.