Shipstead released three novels before this collection of her stories appeared. However, she had been writing and publishing short stories all along: The 10 in this volume all first appeared in literary magazines or on websites between 2009 and 2017. In the acknowledgments, she reveals, "this book came out of years spent learning to be a writer, a process that will never be complete." In a way, then, reading this book is like following along with an apprenticeship. Perhaps that explains why there is not much in the way of thematic cohesion. She's experimenting with topics and structure here, so there is more variety than continuity. I found the book on the whole slightly acrid — accomplished, certainly, but with little warmth to endear me to the characters and plots. Nevertheless, for any Shipstead fan, a new release from her is hard to resist, and it's rewarding to see where she first tried out some of her tropes and to track how her style has developed. (Full review at BookBrowse.)

Maggie Shipstead is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. In You Have a Friend in 10A she skillfully lays all her considerable talent on the page. Even in short stories, her characters are fully realized and draw the reader into their captivating tales. I look forward to Shipstead's next works.

You Have a Friend in 10A is a collection of short stories written by Maggie Shipstead over a span of years. I enjoyed a few of the stories. , The first one called The Cowboy Tango, which showcases a love triangle of sorts between the owner of a dude ranch in Montana, his female employee and his nephew. As well as La Moretta which follows newlyweds on their honeymoon. But the rest of the stories primarily fell a little flat for me. I didn't connect with most of the characters. I would read a story and still have to wonder what was the point. Ultimately, I look forward to Maggie's next full length novel and feel like I am probably just the wrong person for this collection of short stories. 2 stars - it was okay.

Special thanks to NetGalley and Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group for providing me with a copy of You Have a Friend in 10A for review purposes. All opinions are my own.

Rating: 3/5 Stars

You Have a Friend in 10A is a collection of short stories that range from a one-night stand in the Olympic village between two athletes to a honeymoon gone wrong in Eastern Europe. Varied and eloquently worded, Maggie Shipstead gives the reader what she does best - glimpses into beautifully composed characters with layers of nuance and peculiarities.

I am a huge fan of Shipstead - Great Circle is one of my favorite books of 2021 which is probably why I felt a bit let down by You Have a Friend in 10A. We as her readers know what she is capable of and there were quite a few stories in this collection that fell short or flat of her talent.

While I appreciated the effort, Shipstead’s short stories don’t serve her talent here - I wanted to know more about some of the characters, wanted to watch them develop and trace their origins, while instead pieces felt rushed or not fully flushed out.

I would still highly recommend if you are Shipstead fan - there’s some really great work here. But if this is your first introduction to her, Great Circle is where you should focus your attention.

Thanks to Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Maggie Shipstead and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review!

This is one of the most varied books of short stories I’ve ever read- which makes sense, since Shipstead wrote these stories over the course of 10 years. They’re all dark to some degree, and a few even veer into horror (La Moretta, The Great Central Pacific Guano Company). Her characters are often unlikeable- sometimes deliciously, like the narrator of “Acknowledgements,” a new author choosing who to thank in his book, revealing more of his narcissism with every page. Others were unlikable in a way that makes you want to look away, like the recovering former cult member who narrates the title story, You Have a Friend in 10A. Shipstead is a master of character and place.

I did find myself getting slogged down in the reading at times- there didn’t seem to be one thread holding the whole book together. The time was worth it in the end, as I liked each story as it’s own piece, separate of the collection. My favorite was the most earnest and the first in the book, The Cowboy Tango. It follows the staff of a dude ranch, most notably a lonely, tough young girl who comes to live and work there. It’s the perfect example of Shipstead’s ability to write all of her characters complexly, even if they’re otherwise easy to hate. I’d imagine most readers will have ups and downs reading this book, but you’ll probably come out with a few new favorites.

This was a hard one to review. On one hand I do not love short stories so that made it difficult but on the other I love Maggie Shipstead and her other fiction novels (shout out Great Circle) were a revelation to me.

I think that the 10 stories were engaging and varied in topic and content. Great things for a short story anthology to be. The first story also has the best name “The Cowboy Tango”

I think I struggle personally in that I want more depth and character arc than a short story can give me 99% of the time. I think that people who love short stories would adore this.

I appreciate the opportunity to have read and reviewed. Thank you NetGalley and Knopf for the review copy!

This was several short stories and I had a hard time getting into these stories. By the 4th I was skimming so I’ve decided to only give a review here. Just wasn’t my cup of tea.
Thanks NetGalley

After reading Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead, I immediately requested this one on NetGalley. I enjoy short stories (though I find I often don't understand them, but I don't have issue with that), so I was excited to see Shipstead come out with a collection of them. I enjoyed a majority of the stories (I think "The Cowboy Tango" being my favorite), but I did find that there were some stories that I had to put down and return to multiple times because I kept zoning out (looking at you, "In the Olympic Village," "Lambs," and "The Great Central Pacific Guano Company"). By the end of each story, I was usually interested in the characters and plot, but being that short story collections jump around to so many different worlds, that did make reading this relatively short work (at not-quite-300-pages) take longer than a different 300 page work might have. All in all, if you enjoy short story collections, this is a solid one that I will be recommending.

It’s no secret that Maggie Shipstead’s GREAT CIRCLE is one of my favorite books from 2021 so this collection of short stories was high on my TBR for this year and it did not disappoint. This collection was full of love and life and grief and friendship and living. The stories were all so different and utterly captivating. Whether you’re a Maggie Shipstead fan or exploring short stories (like I am) definitely add this one to your book list to savor and read over time, or like I did and in one sitting on an airplane.

The short stories in this collection range vastly in subjects. Some of them caught my attention and I thoroughly enjoy how Maggie wraps up her story, usually in one short and simple sentence.
But other stories were really confusing for me, no matter how slow I would read or how many times I went back to see what I had missed, which was usually nothing. These stories would be greatly enjoyable to the correct audience, it’s just that I’m not in that group.
Maggie’s writing style is fun to read, descriptive, and except for when she’s soaring over my head, entertaining.
Sincere thanks to Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group for an ARC in exchange for my honest review. This book is now available.

I always like it when authors are transparent about their day jobs. Maggie Shipstead is a travel writer, flying around the world crafting pieces that show up in the magazines tucked inside the airplane seat pouch in front of your knees.

This makes sense. In both this collection of stories and in Great Circle, Shipstead pilots us from L.A. to Ireland to Antarctica. Although she's fluent in writing these different places, I like Shipstead best when she's grounded in Montana, where she currently resides. These neo-Westerns are sparse and dusty and were my favorite parts of the aforementioned books.

I didn't finish every story in this collection. Some played with sci-fi, which I already maximized my capacity for earlier this month. My favorite story was the first: "The Cowboy Tango."

Once again, we are treated to the talent, wit, and compassion for the human experience that shines through all of Maggie Shipstead’s work. I was entranced with her long novel from last year, Great Circle, and saw some echoes of a few ideas from that work in selected stories in this collection. As expected, this book of 10 short stories had some that resonated deeper with me than others, in particular the first one of a love triangle on a dude ranch in Montana. Each story is unique, from such diverse settings as the Olympics to a flight in mid-air to Ireland and Paris and themes that range from regret to parental responsibility to meditations on life and love. Shipstead has a masterful command of language and never fails to challenge me to think long and hard about people’s lives outside my experience and offer insights into the human condition.

This was good collection but i constantly felt that each story should have been a novel. Partly because of their length but also because i felt like I needed so much more from the characters and each world, it always felt like it took too long to get into each world, and then not long enough to pay off.

My review appears on Boston's artsfuse.org

https://artsfuse.org/257713/book-review-you-have-a-friend-in-10a/

I do not award stars --

Shipstead's varied stories range from funny with an edge to darkly haunting. She builds her characters with vivid detail, and she serves up the brutal truth alongside vulnerability in this fascinating collection.

In You Have a Friend in 10A, Maggie Shipstead offers gripping, sometimes haunting, sometimes darkly funny short stories, diving into eclectic and vivid settings ranging from an Olympic village, to a deathbed in Paris, to a Pacific atoll, to an abandoned mountaintop.

The tones of each captivating story vary wildly, whether lighthearted with an edge or tragic and dark.

Throughout each disparate story, Shipstead's eye for detail and for illustrating pivotal small moments allows her to explore the lives of a cast of vivid characters and make them feel fully formed.

Maggie Shipstead is also the author of Astonish Me, Seating Arrangements, and Great Circle, one of my favorite reads last year.

I received a prepublication digital edition of this book courtesy of Knopf and NetGalley.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an early copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

My Selling Pitch:
Do you like your feminist short stories with a seething, angry undercurrent? Do you want a book with range, but neat little cohesive callbacks? Do you enjoy efficient characterizations that make characters feel real as soon as they’re introduced?

Pre-reading:
I requested this purely on the cover. And I’m reading it now because it was the shortest book on my shelf, and I’m very tired this week.

Thick of it:
Cowboy Tango is a fun title. I’m such a horse girl sometimes, sheesh. Hate men. Let girls exist. Immediately yes on Harrison. There’s a story to start off, sheesh.

Very Diary of an Oxygen Thief. Holy SAT vocab. I’m too dumb to know what this Nabokovian reference is. I love these pretentious asshole narrators. Haha see, literary darlings. I’m enjoying it, but I feel a little dumb for this story. Like I just don’t know all the references and words. She’s nailing the jackass male writer voice. Oh as soon as I googled that dessert, I was like yes exactly that. Never heard of any of these references. How dare women exist independent of men. Haha, this one is so good. Fucking nailing it. And it was fucking earned in the last story. I really dig this author. I love when the delusional are treated with dire seriousness. It’s my favorite kind of (unintentional) satire. I don’t know any of these authors because I’m uneducated swine who reads garbage rom coms. I like Kendra. Completely agree that good stories have smart readers. Loved it.

Thank you for defining the plant word. Hate that men can just ignore the children they produce. People for butter. Sucks that that’s the world. She writes male entitlement so well. Like where they’re just oblivious to how much of an ass they’re being. I love it. Oh my god, and then the callback to the beginning about butter. Fuck. I’m not at that part anymore, but it just processed now. Why are women always fruit to men? This is not a flattering comparison. We don’t ripen for you to consume. Even if it’s not true, he thought it was, and that’s disgusting. Also, it’s not fair of him not to tell her.

Fucking men. This book has this kind of secret, angry feminist tone and I really dig it. Like all the stories are lovely, but there’s just like this undercurrent of anger, and I’m into it. Definitely movie worthy. There’s a lot of incest in this book. And yet I buy all of it because men. The waiting thing is really mean to do to someone. She does such vivid imagery in these stories with so few words. It’s really impressive. Uh, this one’s really going in on it. It’s getting weird. Like totally buy that that’s the perspective of the character, but also deeply uncomfortable.

Ayy Worcester, baby! She’s so good at characters and making you see people immediately with so little. See, it’s so important that you know how people react when they’re scared and when they’re angry. And I will never have someone who reacts to fear with violence. Odd ending to this one. Not that it doesn’t fit, but I’m just confused by it, and I’m unsure what I’m supposed to make of it. That’s the problem with reading all these short stories. I end up liking them, but then I don’t have anyone to discuss or dissect them with, and they’re always open-ended. The ones I like always feel like little bits that could be expanded into novels, but haven’t been. I really like her writing.

The Olympic orgies have always fascinated me. All those fit bodies. I love that I understand that reference. Fucking classics perverts, all of us. I only know homunculus as that like representation of brain nerve mapping. What else does it mean in this context? I googled: small human being. Literally why do men do that with nipples? It makes no sense. All the other bits, great, but when you push them inside, it’s terrible. And so many of them fixate on it! I read another book recently with an orangutan analogy. Odd to have them so close together. Life is a simulation.

I love immediately needing to Google a word and still not knowing what it means. I’m going with catastrophic. It’s giving NXIVM cult and Tom Cruise and Scientology. It’s always interesting to me what words authors reuse. Like reusing proboscis, that’s a wild one. Only men would encourage women to be silent during birthing like somehow her being “disruptive” ruins the baby. See, that’s what I mean about this book’s undercurrent of anger. It’s all bad stuff happening to women by men. They would’ve been fine without the men. Unfortunately I also just feel like that’s the state of the world we’re in. I wish this short one was a full book. No wonders it’s the title; it’s awesome.

A border collie! Sheesh, author lady, I'm in. This one seamlessly switches perspective. I'm always confused when authors write that animals don’t understand death. I think they do. They mourn. But I guess that’s what she’s attempting to get at, but it didn’t really work for me. I didn’t like this story. Liked elements because I really enjoy this author’s style, but this particular one didn’t do anything for me.

Female weakness? Excuse. Meh, this one doesn’t do anything for me either. Like men are dumb, and awful, and create unfair power structures. We done been knew.

Nice call back to the first story. I like how this book is organized. Not a huge fan of this one either.

Post-reading:
Wow, really enjoyed this author. Definitely going to be adding her to my automatic read list. The last few stories are my least favorite, so I kinda wish that it had ended on a better note, but those early stories are so good that it’s worth 5 stars. I would take an entire book about the Hollywood dad and his daughters and the woman who escaped from a cult. I’m a fan of a lot of authors’ short story collections though. It’s very easy to have a great little snapshot of a concept without having to complete it. There are fewer places for it to go wrong. Also just love that horse story.

Who should read this:
Angry sad girls
Feminists
People who like muse-y, salacious little short stories

Do I want to reread this:
Yes

Similar books:
* Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado-dark, feminist short stories
* The Dark Dark by Samantha Hunt-darker short stories, modern gothics
* The Seaplane on Final Approach-Rebecca Rukeyser-dark, sleazy, reads like a short story
* Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link-dark short stories
* Diary of an Oxygen Thief by Anonymous-pretentious asshole of an unreliable narrator
* Corinne by Rebecca Morrow-odd, complete characterizations in very few words
* And That is Why Men Are Terrible by Christopher Mertic Lewis-more stories about why a lot of men are awful

I really enjoy Maggie Shipstead's last book and so I requested this new volume without totally understanding that it was a volume of short stories. Though I'm not a big reader of short stories I enjoyed this collection because of the skill of the writer. Like all short story collections I was drawn to some more than others but all in all I'd recommend this new edition while looking forward to Shipstead's next novel. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

Maggie Shipstead's Great Circle kept me riveted. Unfortunately, her collection of short stories in You Have a Friend in 10A didn't. The 10 stories are very varied, introspective and pretty dark with complex, flawed characters who are rarely endearing. If you are looking for something light and amusing, this isn't it. On the plus side, the stories are wide ranging, evocative and thought-provoking, and provide a varied commentary on life, death, love and grief. For short story fans who appreciate introspective characters, this collection may be your cup of tea.

Thank you to Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group and NetGalley for an advance reader copy.

This was quite a delightful book of short stories by Maggie Shipstead. I especially like the story that was a veiled referral to Scientology. Maggie is great in creating characters, writing dialogue, and descriptions of the setting. Thank you NetGalley for providing me with this ARC.

This is a collection of short stories and I personally have a harder time reviewing short stories. Some pulled me in more than others. Some seemed slowed with many flawed characters that I had a hard time connecting with.. it was a slow read for me. Thank you NetGalley for this ARC.