Games and Rituals

Katherine Heiny’s first story collection, Single, Carefree, Mellow was published in 2015, and praised in the New York Times and by Lena Dunham of Girls fame. Since then, she has written two novels, Standard Deviation and Early Morning Riser, which I often recommend to customers.

Games and Rituals is Heiny’s return to the short-story form, and I loved it! Heiny explores her pet topics – relationships gone awry, men and women floundering in new cities, and the complicities and complexities of affairs.

In ‘Cobra’, William’s wife Rachel presents him with a 34-item checklist for perimenopause, with 33 boxes ticked. She also embarks on an energetic Marie Kondo audit of their belongings. William begins to suspect that he does not ‘spark joy’ as his favourite (but worse for wear) slippers, boots and jackets are donated to charity. He finally protests when Rachel wants to go through his books one by one.

In ‘Bridesmaid Revisited’, Marlee wears her hideous bridesmaid dress to work as she is hungover, depressed and has no clean laundry. The other staff at the photocopier sales office pretend not to notice, further adding to her level of distress. The backstory of her bridesmaid experience is revealed, and the horror of being a bridesmaid to her high school friend (and bridezilla), Rhonda Rhinebeck.

In ‘Pandemic Behaviour’, Daphne finds herself unemployed – the bookshop she worked at is closed, and the octogenarian professor whose memoir she was helping to write is isolating. Daphne and her flatmate hunker down with reams of toilet paper and N95 masks. Suffering from extreme migraines, her Zoom sessions with her neurologist provide a social outlet and they begin to chat nightly about all manner of things.

Despite the comedic aspects of these stories, they have much depth, and demonstrate Heiny’s great affection and empathy for her flawed and struggling characters.