Catherine Lacey really is one of a kind. I really loved this collection. That opening story was a gut punch.

[ 3.5 stars ]

I liked Lacey’s debut novel so I was really intrigued to read her short stories.
She experimented with her long sentences (love love love her super long sentences) and some of these stories were little gems.

I absolutely adored Lacey's The Answers and was eager to pick up this short story collection. However, I did not enjoy this collection nearly as much as her earlier novel. First, the way the collection was put together did not quite feel right. Some of the stories muddled by being together and may have benefited from being alongside less similar stories. There were certainly a couple of big hits for me, but others were less memorable and several of the stories felt as if they ended too abruptly for me.

This is a collection of short stories that have been published before over the course of Lacey’s career and as an avid admirer of her work, I’ve read them all already however, having them in a book together is joyous. Lacey is the kind of writer that grasps me and pulls me deep into her long sentences and doesn’t let me go until I’ve finished the story. I lover this writer’s craft.

I’ve yet to come across a writer with such seamless control over the millennial language as Catherine Lacey exhibits in just twelve stories. In New York, a grieving Texan is unable to escape the vestiges of her brother’s death; elsewhere, a sheltered art professor starves his students of technology as his relationship crumbles in the interim; an orphan’s life gets interrupted when she’s called to North Dakota to see her godfather off to the other side — in Certain American States, humility and humanity are conjoined in their effort to sweep state lines, to save a nation. From cover to cover, it becomes evident that we may never possess the command or fucked-up charm of the creatures Lacey summons in her forthcoming story collection.