Review: “You Think It, I’ll Say It”

Curtis Sittenfeld sure knows how to turn out a short story.

“You Think It, I’ll Say It” is a collection of her sassier-than-normal short stories where plain-faced and plain-spoken women tend to get the upper hand.

If Sittenfeld’s sharp-witted protagonists aren’t writers in flux - magazine writers, political journalists, advertising copywriters, lost poets - they’re wives with children and husbands they don’t much care for. Wives who are pining for an affair of one kind or other. Ordinary women looking for something out of the ordinary.

There’s a sly cunning in Curtis’ short stories. A furtive comedy to prise out social observations from contemporary mores. A midwestern Jane Austen in sensible shoes.

Where flawed characters inadvertently reveal the cracks in the human condition.