Always Happy Hour

Starred review from September 5, 2016
In Miller’s stellar new collection of stories, a series of women who are struggling
to figure out their lives must learn to cope with unsatisfying relationships and complicated friendships. All of the stories
feature intimate, first-person
narration from a woman who is in some form of trouble. In the title story, a college composition teacher has trouble maintaining her relationship with her boyfriend, mainly because they both drink heavily and he has a young son. In another story, “First Class,” a young woman tags along on expensive trips with her wealthy, bored friend even though neither of them especially want to be together. “Big Bad Love” concerns a narrator who works at a shelter for abused children. She cares about the neglected kids and dotes on one of them in particular, hoping the child will remember that someone loved her once. The women in these stories worry about their weight, how they look in bikinis, if they will ever have children, and whether they are living the life they should be. Miller’s collection feels so true because it never glosses over the desperate or unflattering portrayals of its narrators, but neither does it exploit their faults. These stories acutely explore boyfriends, exes, poor choices, and the sad fallout of so many doomed relationships.

Starred review from October 1, 2016
A sense of detachment permeates the lives of the women in this short story collection, yet readers will find themselves riveted.They drink too much, keep company with the wrong men (or perhaps the men are right and they are wrong), and moon around their lives like bored teens with nothing to do but find trouble on a sultry summer day. Some have money, others are seriously strapped for cash. Most are educated, all are smarteven if they dont make smart choices. The women who slouch around the centers of Millers (The Last Days of California, 2014, etc.) short storiesdrinking dive-bar beer or mixed drinks made strong, ordering in pizza or getting fast food from the drive-thru lane, binge-watching TV, and looking for love in all the wrong placesare all about squandered potential, loneliness, and listlessness, distance where closeness should be and vice versa. They may be frustratingly disconnected, indifferent to the men who love them, attracted to those who maybe dont. Their relationships with boyfriends, husbands, and exes, parents, siblings, friends, and neighbors are complicated, yet many seem stuck. What's holding them in place? Laziness? Fear? I guess my main problem with her is that she doesnt seem to be afraid of anything, the protagonist of one story, The House on Main Street, a divorced Southern grad student, says of her roommate, Melinda, a New Yorker who eats different foods (fresh meats she buys at the farmers market), writes different poetry (about apples and trees and never become more than apples and trees), and beds a different sort of man (Baptist and clean-cut and gets along well with everyone) than she. When Melinda is out, Millers protagonist sneaks into her bedroom to look at her stuff, marveling at how distinct the trappings of her roommate's life are from her own, never touching a thing. I just stand in her space feeling like an intruder, she says. The reader may respond the same way to the 16 stories in this collection, which feel both homey and exotic, limning lives at once familiar and distinctly their own. Like a two-for-one drink special or a boxful of beer, this bracingly strong collection may prove intoxicating.

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August 1, 2016
Miller, who caught the attention of dedicated readers with her first novel, "The Last Days of California", returns with a second story collection (after "Big World") featuring marginalized women struggling with the consequences of bad decisions or bad luck.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.