PositiveBookforumFlattery, whose stories have been compared to Lorrie Moore’s, depicts dead-end jobs and the grinding fear of poverty. While her style is jaunty and enlivening—Groucho Marx funny—her young women are even less hopeful than Moore’s. They’re held hostage by the economic machinery of their lives ... Beneath the one-liners and clever dark comedy, Show Me a Good Time shows real daring. \'Abortion, a Love Story\' intentionally takes things too far, pushing way past \'plot\' and \'character\' to arrive at something that feels violently new. Flattery’s depiction of precarity is not ornamental. It stretches and blisters the form of the stories themselves, leaving the reader laughing, crying, confused—and feeling understood.
