The pursuit of desire — the hubris and folly of it, its links to our intellect and the tricky synchronicity of brain and heart — is King’s best subject ... King reminds us of the revelations still to be found in plot and character, those elements of fiction that might be called old-fashioned if it weren’t for the fact that she, with her range and emotional precision, never makes them feel so. There is, it turns out, still much more to know about what living is all about, and the things that crack us open, geode-like, to reveal some hidden marvel within ... King’s acuity with all that roils inside us often puts me in the mind of Tessa Hadley or Joan Silber, authors who shun ironic distance for forthright proximity, whose feminism is implicit, who could inscribe the contents of the human heart on the head of a pin ... It’s clear from these stories that she’s never lost sight of how difficult it is to take oneself seriously when no one else really does. It’s one of the reasons I think of her as 'a writer’s writer' — in the best sense, in the sense that we never doubt her belief in storytelling as our best chance at truth and its solaces ... In our time of anxiety and isolation, King writes stories to curl up in, by which I mean they afford us something rarely celebrated in literature: comfort.
... wonderfully absorbing ... Five Tuesdays in Winter features stories that pull you in instantly and make you wonder what the author is going to spring on you next ... Long form or short, this is a writer who has mastered the art of conveying depths of human feeling in one beautiful sentence after another.
10 fierce, funny, tender stories that demonstrate both range and emotional heft. Five of them are brand-new; all of them are stunners ... Creatureliness, embodiment, the body’s strength, and vulnerability haunt these stories ... The book’s title story is King at her distinctive best, combining whimsy, wistfulness, and warmth in a hilarious and romantic story ... King gives us those words in stories that compress marvelous polarities: They hum with intense feeling even as they are dense with allusion; their literary sophistication never obscures their accessibility to our need to be transported.
... the 10 short stories collected here have the immersive feel of longer fiction, shrunk down to snow-globe miniature ... Beyond the tenderhearted midlife romance of the title story, Tuesdays' outcomes tend to lean more bitter than sweet. But the book's surreal closer, 'The Man at the Door,' goes out on a high note—spinning a nursing mother's domestic drudgery into a small triumph of magical realism, with a tidy side of vengeance.
King showcases her range as a short story writer, never allowing the reader to become too sure about her stories ... Throughout the collection, King continually builds tension and obliterates expectation, keeping the reader in a constant state of surprise ... King’s collection continually breaks through stereotypes, defying expectation and not allowing the reader to pinpoint anything typical about her short stories ... King’s care for her characters means that they are never simplified but allowed to revel in their complexity. The variety and disruptions are just other ways King honors how human life is never what we think it is, always changing and morphing. By allowing characters their full range of pain, vulnerability, and happiness, Five Winters drops readers into imperfect lives, evoking awe and anger and admiration and futility, reminding us how it feels to be human.
Lily King isn’t afraid of big emotional subjects: desire and grief, longing and love, growth and self-acceptance. But she eschews high drama for the immersive quiet of the everyday ... Here we inhabit the worlds of authors and mothers, children and friends; we experience their lives in clear, graceful prose that swells with generous possibility. This is a book for writers and lovers, a book about storytelling itself, a book for all of us ... the formal constraints of the short story yield fresh resonance ... everything King writes is great.
... as compelling and accomplished as anything you’re likely to read in the genre ... If humans were inclined to express love freely or easily, without hindrance or doubt, Lily King might be out of business. Instead she proves to be a deft chronicler of human emotion, registering shifts both large and small ... Most striking, perhaps, is the richness and complexity of stories that seem to be about one thing, then reveal themselves to be much more. In each story, King creates a world with its own rules and rhythms. There’s a nimbleness and ease to all of it – the small intimate moments and sense of longing, the jarring detours and atmospherics. Story for story, this collection is simply a knockout.
Fans of King’s novels will find much to enjoy in the 10 short stories in her first collection, half of which are previously unpublished ... While certain contemporary novelists steer clear of affect, King dives into the emotional worlds of her characters whole-hog, her wry humour ensuring that tenderness never veers into sentimentality ... With their plot and character development, King’s stories remain novelistic. Indeed, it’s the longer works, which allow sufficient space for the subtleties of the push and pull of relationships, that are the most successful ... King joins authors including Sarah Hall and Megan Hunter in invoking magical realism for their heroines to avenge wrongs inflicted by men ... it is the exquisite attention with which King articulates all that roils inside us that secures her place in the contemporary canon.
Who knew she was such an exceptional short story writer? ... About half of these stories are new. All of them flash with brilliance ... Very satisfying title story ... King’s observations are both sharp and generous. Five Tuesdays in Winter is a collection worth dipping into again and again.
Rich and varied ... These stories crackle and shine, and King is a master of the thumbnail portrait: she can create a fully realized life in a single paragraph and then alter it in breathtaking ways. This is a must for fans of the short story.
King...can make you fall in love with a character fast, especially the smart, vulnerable, often painfully self-conscious adolescent protagonists featured in several of the 10 stories collected here, half previously published, half new ... Full of insights and pleasures.
... dazzling ... King is a master at conveying through subtle description the small, painful, bumbling moments of life and the awkwardness of human interactions. In the title story, a touching and quiet tale of hope and connection, a repressed bookseller, the single parent to a gregarious 12-year-old daughter, falls in love with his employee ... A series of beautifully written character studies brimming with insight into the human condition.
A significant part of these memorable, re-readable stories’ charm is that King gifts them with so much keen dialogue, truthful interiority, and fine backstory—the stuff of real life. An absolute must for King’s fans, this would also be great for book groups.
