Difficult Women by Roxane Gay

A short story collection that focuses on unconventional female characters.

I always have trouble with short story collections. I have enjoyed very few of them completely, and even when I do enjoy them, I can’t really fully immerse myself in them. This one was no exception.

These stories focus on “difficult” women. Women who are somewhat damaged, somewhat angry, women who don’t fit the norm.

I did enjoy this book. There wasn’t a single story that I did not like reading, or that I wanted to skip. I was engaged in the book as a whole and I constantly wanted to pick it back up. However, I just found a lot of these stories quite forgettable.  I have just finished this, but I can’t recall most of the stories, even though I did enjoy reading them at the time. There are a few that stuck, and I found to be brilliant but overall, nothing spectacular and nothing truly memorable happened for me.

While I do appreciate the messages the author was trying to send, I found some of the stories to be bitter and their messages to be heavy-handed.

Also, be aware that this has a lot of harrowing and disturbing content, which sometimes made me uncomfortable, but I did understand where she was going with this sort of violence.

So, should you get this when it hits the shelves? Yes. I would recommend you checking this out, especially if you enjoy unreliable or unlikable female characters because they are, at times, really nicely done.

If you have any recommendations for short story collections, please leave them in the comments, since I would love to be finally blown away by them.

*I received this review copy from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 

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