The Kissing List

February 27, 2012
Reents’s collection is formally adept—one story in which a woman trades sex for designer clothes moves seamlessly into another that begins with an ill-fitting and outdated suit worn to a temp job. Despite the pleasing transitions, however, the entire volume is infused with a melancholic wistfulness that can come off as self-indulgent, and the weakest stories tend to be shallow and predictable. The stories form a patchwork of the lives of friends and acquaintances in New York, told from different perspectives, which flesh out significant events—such as Laurie’s cancer, or the ever-changing landscape of Sylvia’s love life. Reents uses the myriad viewpoints and freedom of the short format to play with different styles and forms, but the whole is cohesive. “Roommates,” for example, is a traditional, realist narrative, but Reents experiments with surrealism (“Disquisition on Tears”) and a detached, third-person narrative that reinforces the notion of a diaspora of the self (“Love for Women”). If not exactly trailblazing, Reents has created a collection that is emotionally vivid and stylistically interesting. Agent: Emily Forland, the Wendy Weil Agency.

March 15, 2012
Debut collection of loosely connected stories follows a group of highly educated, often underachieving women through their 20s. "Kissing" introduces us to most of the continuing characters through the eyes of Sylvie while she is a graduate student at Oxford. She sketches a tangled web of flirtations, sexual relations and betrayals among various expat Americans that continues back in the States, where unsettled, disconnected maneuverings are the norm for young people unsure of who they really are. We don't much like Sylvie at the end of the next story, "Roommates," when she moves out of the Manhattan apartment she shares with cancer-stricken Laurie; her oddly noncommittal relationship with Lance, a considerably older doctor from her Western hometown, is off-putting as well. Reluctance to engage is a temptation for much of this collection, which examines marrying for money ("Love for Women"), drifting in and out of jobs ("Temporary") and weird sex ("Little Porn Story") as strategies these smart, anxious women use to delay figuring out what they really want from life. But everyone grows up, whether they like it or not. The strongest stories, "Games" and "Awesome," plumb Sylvie's insecurities and show her learning to be more accepting, less concerned with the impression she makes. The weakest, Laurie's delusional, cancer-stoked reverie in "Disquisition on Tears," strays too far from the plain, realistic plot and character development that is Reents' forte. Gratuitously baroque developments in a few tales also suggest an author still not entirely clear about the essential nature of her talent. On the whole, however, Reents impresses with her knowledge of conflicted young-adult hearts and her astute portrait of their social lives during the years in which the graduates of fancy colleges haven't yet figured out who will make it big and who will merely get along. Sharp work from a promising writer who might do even better with the broader scale of a novel.

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March 15, 2012

Don't be fooled by the cover--this is not the first chick-lit novel from the author of Last Will and Testament: My Frozen Eggs, but a complicated series of interlocking short stories. The main characters are all college-educated women, but each story has its own voice and tone. In a collection whose strength lies in its dark humor--Reents has a flair for difficult situations--the title piece is the weakest and the fluffiest. "Roommates," however, is an unsettling, unsentimental look at a cancer victim seen through the eyes of her roommate and her wig's Styrofoam head. "This Is Just To Say" is about the friend who doesn't make it into your memoirs. Readers may want to dismiss "The Memo" as another trendy entrant in the workplace genre, but like Jennifer Egan's PowerPoint story from A Visit from the Goon Squad, it succeeds on storytelling power. VERDICT Not all of these stories work--"Disquisition on Tears" doesn't come together, for instance--but overall this is recommended for readers of contemporary short fiction. "The Memo" alone is worth a trip to the library.--Pamela Mann, St. Mary's Coll. of Maryland, St. Mary's City

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2012
This invigorating debut collection follows a group of young women searching for fulfillment in life and love. The more notable of the loosely interlinked stories follow the relationships of flighty, headstrong Sylvie, from her life as an Oxford graduate student kissing nearly anyone in sight to a relationship-weary New Yorker. In the tender Roommates, Sylvie shares an apartment with friend-of-a-friend Laurie, who is battling cancer. As Sylvie's relationship with an older doctor becomes muddled, Laurie's relationship with an ex-boyfriend completely dissolves, forcing the two women to acknowledge their unsettled desires. Games finds 28-year-old Sylvie fraught with jealousy on a vacation during which her boyfriend's affections waver. Other standouts include Animal Cruelty, in which a young woman escapes to her family's remote cabin to mull over her unplanned pregnancy. As the cabin becomes increasingly overrun with mice, her struggle to come to terms with her situation grows frenetic. The dreamlike Disquisition of Tears follows a house visit of a headless woman. Reents' witty narratives highlight the nuances of her characters' desires and hesitations.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)