This book has generated a lot of buzz in literary circles, and I bought it on a whim, wanting to read some contemporary short fiction. Also, I read an essay on the Paris Review blog by Emma Straub about My So-Called Life and adolescent female friendships and I loved it. The book was ultimately disappointing. There were a few stories in the collection that I did enjoy, but the writing wasn't as good as I wanted it to be, and ultimately, I felt like many of the stories focused on an unhappy female...

Emma Straub is undeniably talented, but this reads as if a person whose main emotional experiences involved well-intentioned independent films and reading other people's books were sent to an MFA program in order to learn how to express those ready-made sentiments as expediently as possible. There is a definite Lorrie Moore influence here, but none of Moore's deep understanding of human nature. I felt as if I were reading about paper dolls or gingerbread people instead of real people. I'm on boa...

I love Emma Straub. I love that she is a bookseller. I love her blog. I like when she takes to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to tell writers how to win the hearts of the bookstore staff at public readings (See also: Candy). I love that she had four novels rejected, had her collection of short stories published by a small house and then got picked up by a larger one and now one of those rejected novels will see the light of day. She’s my new favorite success story and I wish she would make...

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There are a few of these stories I really enjoyed and a few that I didn't, I normally have a hard time with little stories like this. Do not get me wrong I enjoyed this just not a top rating book for me.

Excuse me while I have a giggle that I read a book called Other People We Married and discovered the goofy piece of television that is "Sister Wives" at roughly the same time. Alas, there are no polygamists in this book. Just people falling in and out of love, mostly, which is the subject of approximately 90% of short story collections these days. Modern romance. It's a good read when it's done well, but just as frequently it seems to be this Miranda July-like, affected hipster hell. Emma Straub...

Wonderful language. No word is wasted and every story is a gem.

I just finished Emma Straub's debut book, a collection of short stories called Other People We Married. Overall, I was impressed. Below are my thoughts on each story (copied and pasted from updates posted while reading the book): "Some People Must Really Fall In Love" -- my favorite in the collection so far. A 27-years-old college professor falls in love with one of her teenage students, and she tries dealing with this by going on a blind date with a man of appropriate age. I have no fault with...

There is one really excellent story in this collection: "Abraham's Enchanted Forest". The protagonist Greta is so well-drawn in so few words, and so much fun to follow around. Probably it would be fun to follow around any teenager working at her parents' makeshift roadside amusement park, but this is especially true in Greta's case.The rest of the stories suffer from stale writing, stale characters, typos, lack of narrative drive, or all of the above. It's obvious that Straub is talented, but it...

I really like Emma Straub as a writer, and the short stories in this collection do not disappoint. Her characters and their relationships display all of the trademark humanity and wryness that I grew to appreciate in her novels. The downside is that her style is so deep, that the stories do not last long enough. I'm looking for 300+ pages in which I can lose myself, but this is entirely due to my preferences and failings as a picky reader, rather than any shortcomings on Ms. Straub's part. The t...

Yknow, I had high hopes for this book. I liked a novel of hers. Didn't love it, but liked it enough to want to seek out another book by her. I love short stories. They're my very favorite form of fiction. I live for discovering new amazing short story collections. So I was excited for this. It was so disappointing. I can't even explain why. The stories just didn't hold my attention. They weren't very well-written, the characters weren't very interesting, and the stories themselves were pretty......

Reading this while puttering around waiting for my sparkly loooooong-awaited new computer to fill up with all of my hugely giganormous files, with the windows open and music on. Today's the first day it really feels like spring around here, and these stories fit the mood perfectly.

Seems like this is another case of an author that doesn’t really know how to write out the profound things they think about in their head. A lot of contemporary fiction writers are doing this method – writing about everyday things in a new perspective, with a deeper insight in the inner psychology of the characters and discussing social norms and their effect on an individual. What I found that makes an author great, in this field of topics, is that their sentences and internal monologue of c

I got this book from the library because I had just read another book by this author that I liked so I wanted to read her other books. I didn't know it was only short stories until I got home. I think short stories are useless - it's the equivalent of starting 10 different books and only reading the first chapter. The only short stories books I have liked are Stephen King's because at least there is somewhat of a start, middle & end to them. I probably would have skipped this book all together i...

This was okay. Some stories were brilliant. I loved "Marjorie and the Birds" and all the stories about Franny. "Some People Must Really Fall in Love" was excellent. Others really fell flat: "Abraham's Enchanted Forest" dragged on. "A Map of Modern Palm Springs" and "Rosemary" were meh. Most of the stories acted like heartache and marital dissatisfaction are the only parts of life. Not sorry I read it though.