I absolutely loved The Girls by Emma Cline and had been patiently waiting for her next work to be released. I'm glad to say that I was not disappointed. Her short story writing was just as haunting and engaging as her novel writing. Each of the stories' premises were really intriguing to read. The author definitely has a strong talent for the written word and I look forward to seeing what else she has to offer.

A solid, full short story collection from an incredible writer. Each story was unique and whole, and I often was left wanting more.

My first book by Emma Cline and I'm really glad I picked up her collection of stories because I felt like I got a good grasp of her writing style! Her stories can be dark in nature but the way the author makes her characters confront their past, their actions, the consequences that befall them will have you immersed right away and marveling at how she brought about the stories together. This reading experience has me excited to read her novel and will definitely make me look out for more of her books in the future.

Some of these stories, I did already know from the New Yorker. 
A lovely connection, which feel very now. Reading these stories made me dream of being back on the West Coast. Feeling estranged. Feeling uneasy, but still smiling.

This ... was a disappointment, which makes me a little sad because I'm such a fan of Emma Cline. The first story really starts the book off slowly and it rarely picks up from there.

I’m judging a 2020  fiction contest. It’d be generous to call what I’m doing upon my first cursory glance—reading. I also don’t take this task lightly. As a fellow writer and lover of words and books, I took this position—in hopes of being a good literary citizen. My heart aches for all the writers who have a debut at this time. What I can share now is the thing that held my attention and got this book from the perspective pile into the read further pile. 

I heard the first story in this collection, strangely while I was in the bath, I think it was read aloud on the NYer fiction podcast. My wife wondered what I was laughing about all alone the tub. Anyhow Cline, is a masterful story writer… I enjoyed this collection very much.

These stories were just... fine. While I do love the way Emma Cline writes, and there is something almost Carver-esque to her writing (and I do enjoy Carver), I just think that these stories did not do much. I felt like stuff happened for shock value in them, to elicit some kind of emotional response, and yet that never happened for me.

I went in expecting stories similar to The Girls, and while the same satisfyingly precise writing style prevails, Cline's subject matter is different. Like The Girls, however, Cline's ideas about power are still very prevalent. I enjoyed her ability to quickly capture the varied lives of these pages' inhabitants. She makes the seemingly mundane interesting, and that is commendable.

Each story was incisive, with precise, careful insights about the characters. I loved this even more than Cline's "The Girls."

Short stories are so hard for me. But I had really enjoyed Emma Cline's debut book, The Girls, and wanted to give this one a try. Sadly the stories just didn't work for me. I found it hard to focus on what she was writing, so I eventually started to go to each new story in hopes that one (or a couple) of them would grab my attention. None of them were working for me, unfortunately.

Daddy is a debut short story collection by author Emma Cline, who previously published the popular novel The Girls.   The Girls has been on my TBR list for awhile so I jumped when I saw her new short story collection was available.  Yes, I am reading the story collection before her novel so i am a little mixed up.  

This collection features stories that seem to focus on the relations and interactions between various people, whether significant others or parent/child...all stories were full of sly observations and a healthy dash of cynicism.   This collection is a mood.  A mood where you are kind of giving the world the side-eye.  Some stories spoke to me more than others, which is often the case in story collections.  Overall, I enjoyed the book but wished the stories were more consistent in their appeal. 

I will definitely be picking up The Girls sometime soon.

I am sorry for the inconvenience but I don’t have the time to read this anymore and have lost interest in the concept. I believe that it would benefit your book more if I did not skim your book and write a rushed review. Again, I am sorry for the inconvenience.

In this collection, Emma Cline presents us ten short-stories, ten brief moments into the lives of the characters presented in each of them. There is no clear start or ending to any of them. This may be frustrating for some readers. I found myself craving to know more about a story or two. What happened? Where did they go? How did they feel after the event? ...but one doesn't always get that answer. How much do we truly know about the private lives of those around us? 

This curiosity is precisely what made the stories work for me. The intriguing sensation of needing to know more about these people. These strangers who crossed my path for a brief moment in time and left me wanting.

When Emma Cline released her debut, THE GIRLS, she was quickly heralded as one of the country’s best young novelists, earning rave reviews for her superb writing and ability to weave violence and coming-of-age themes into a compulsively readable thrill ride. Now she returns with DADDY, a collection of short stories that delve into complicated interactions between men and women, old age and youth, past and present. With stories that linger and characters brewing with malcontent, Cline’s first collection proves that THE GIRLS was no fluke and she is here to stay.

I should start this review by stating that I am not your typical short story reader: I prefer narratives that are lengthy and winding, and I like to spend hours with good characters. That said, I would read a grocery list from Emma Cline, and I am so grateful that I ignored my usual distaste for short stories when I picked up DADDY.

In the same vaguely disconcerting way that she kicked off THE GIRLS, Cline eases us into her book with “What Can You Do with a General,” a seemingly conventional story about a man preparing for his adult children to return home for the holidays. As he considers the ways that they have grown ungrateful and notes how distracted his eldest daughter seems over her new relationship with a much older man, he slips shockingly violent thoughts into very normal ones. Juxtaposing the everyday with the horrifying, Cline hints at a dark past and a sense of rage simmering just beyond the page. And just like that, readers are lulled into a false sense of security that Cline quickly upends.

Each of these stories is interesting enough on its own --- a woman escaping an affair with a celebrity, a middle-aged man traveling to his son’s boarding school to deal with a problem, and even two women in a luxury rehab center --- but what unites them is an overwhelming feeling of discomfort and inadequacy. All of Cline’s characters stand on their own, but each is at a low point. In “Los Angeles,” we meet a young girl who works at a trendy store as she watches her dreams of acting fade away. “Son of Friedman” is about an aging and down-on-his-luck producer who reunites with a more successful friend. And tales of infidelity and divorce dance through the background of nearly every story, with a father figure always leading the way, directly or not.

Cline deftly digs into her characters’ insecurities, laying them bare on the page, and immersing readers into their lives with swiftness and accuracy. This is a talent that always leaves me in awe, but in short stories it is especially necessary, and she wastes no time setting each of her stories straight and getting her audience acclimated.

The pieces in DADDY present a “slice of life” in a unique character, typically one who is at a crossroads and quite often masking some hidden anger or resentment. Cline finds strength in these moments, pushing her characters right to the edge and letting readers put together the pieces of how they got there. This is an intellectual but thrilling collection that thrives on discomfort and plain awkwardness, be it from the tension of a difficult conversation, the pain of losing a loved one, or the subtleties of the relationships between men and women.

Though I cannot say that I found any of the 10 stories here to be weaker than the rest, there are certainly highlights, namely “Los Angeles,” “The Nanny” and “Marion.” While each focuses on reflection and the potential for any interaction to go awry with even the slightest misunderstanding, there is a quiet, violent twist to these tales that made me feel like Cline had lived with her characters for much longer than a single short story. “Marion,” which centers on a young girl coming of age and learning about sexuality with her slightly older friend, has a delicious “Mean Girls” vibe to it, but with the added elements of questionable parents, strange adults and the intoxication of friendship. This entry in particular wowed me --- it had all the same vibrancy and horror of THE GIRLS, but concentrated in a few shocking pages --- and if there is a peak to the book, this is definitely it.

Perfect for fans of Curtis Sittenfeld and Jac Jemc, DADDY is a complex and sharply observed collection of stories from a brilliant young author that will leave readers hungry for her next novel.

I loved Cline's first book, The Girls and I thought I'd like this one just as much even though short stories are not my favorite thing to read.  Her characters are always interesting and well thought out, but in this book, the plots were naturally rushed because of the format.  However, there were too many instances when the story ended and I was left wondering what just happened.

Thanks to Random House Publishing Group - Random House and NetGalley for the ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Emma Cline is a modern master of the form of the short story, and her new collection Daddy explores a modern world where the anxious feminine character weaves among vulturous men in the literal and anticipated senses to examine what happens when we indulge in our anxieties. 

In these stories, our characters are occasionally well aware of the emotional and physical atrocities they have committed to another, while others are ignorant of the slow-burning impact their actions have all had on those around them until decades later, if at all. In every sense, these pieces are a subtle yet striking window into the inner workings of our characters, oftentimes with some power dynamic that strikes at the foundations of every interaction, be it familial, aged, professional, gendered, or psychological. These stories are wholly about the discovery or lack of discovery of this dynamic, and the anxious vibrations that hum beneath the surface of every interactions and what we use to cope with these anxieties. Every story in this collection is an incredible feat of storytelling engineering, and the true thematic depth of where Cline is going is often not apparent at the beginning of each piece as a structural shift often comes later to reveal the true directions of the piece. While this can often be disorienting when handled by less capable writers, Cline is able to perform a magic of bookends in her stories that open like a butterfly’s wings once you have the perspective of seeing them furl open for the first time. 

My favorite pieces in this collection were easily “What Can You Do With A General, Los Angeles, Northeast Regional, Marion, Mack The Knife, and A/S/L. A stunning achievement of the form.

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group for providing me with a copy of Emma Cline’s short story collection, Daddy: Stories, in exchange for an honest review.

I enjoyed Cline’s debut novel, The Girls, and I was thrilled to be given a copy of her latest work, Daddy: Stories. I love a good short story collection and as much as I was impressed by The Girls, Cline truly shines in the short story format. They are all page-turners. I bet you can’t read just one without going to the next. Cline is masterful with tension in the short story format. She grips the reader, ending her stories at the exact perfect moment that leaves a lingering sense of wonder about the character’s next move. This collection is haunting.

Cline’s stories are incredibly uncomfortable. They deal with queasy, taboo topics like adultery, addiction, and the sexualization of children. None of her stories are easy. Reading Daddy: Stories is an experience akin to watching a horror movie, where I physically felt my body curl into a ball and my eyes turning to slits,  to protect myself as I continued with the horrific situations that the characters were placed in.

Thank goodness not every story or character was relatable, but those that were, added another level of cringe. I guarantee that you will see some of your own terrible, dark traits reflected back to you in Cline’s characters. I felt it most in Marion, where an innocent preteen girl gets wrapped up in the deceptions of an older teen.

Daddy: Stories is one of my top reads for 2020 and a must if you gravitate towards short stories. Cline is a fearless writer with complex characters. Steady yourself for a bumpy, uncomfortable ride. Also be prepared to have these stories linger in your mind for a good week after finishing.

This was good as the first book from this author. I liked this book so much. I really enjoyed this book. It was a great ride. I really liked characters and whole story is absolutely amazing.

Emma Kline’s Daddy is written in a crisp fresh style, but I had a difficult time engaging with the characters and stories.

Not having read The Girls, I didn't quite know what to expect from Cline's stories. But after reading her long piece, "White Noise," in the New Yorker, I felt compelled to check out Daddy. It lives up to all the hype--and then some. Her voice, almost always in the 3rd person, is cool, wry, insightful, and a joy to read. Each story in this collection is a gem, though highlights for me included "Son of Friedman" and "Northeast Regional." Highly recommended!