Thanks to @NetGalley I have had this book on my shelf for ages and I have no earthly idea why it took so long for me to read it. But I am thrilled that I finally did. These short story gems are absolutely glorious! Wry, intelligent, highly surprising and delicious to read. Added bonus: so many have kick ass women as the main character.. I recommend this book with great enthusiasm. Brava, Megan Mayhew Bergman.

Absolutely gorgeously written. I loved every word of prose. The first story was my favorite, the last, longest story was my least favorite, but I enjoyed every bit. I can't stop thinking about Lionfish. What a cozy, atmospheric, relationship-driven book. It's all those things, really! Can't wait to read more from this author.

I’m new to Bergman’s work and this short story collection is so beautiful. I loved all of these women, imperfect, searching, scratching out some meaning. And their names! Holland, Hayes, Skip. I love it.

My favorites from this bunch are The Heirloom, Inheritance, & Peaches, 1979. Bergman’s writing is compelling and engrossing, rich with a sense of place. I’ll read anything she writes.

Megan Mayhew Bergman is a short story writer whose previous two collections received great acclaim. I really enjoyed her 2015 collection Almost Famous Women, so I was intrigued to see what she would do in this book as she wrote about women who are learning to chase what they want and overcome tradition and history. While these aren't connected stories, I have the feeling that a discerning reader who read through the collection a second or third time would find a lot of threads to follow.
In "Wife Days," Farrah negotiates with her husband for some days to just be her own person instead of following his whims, or those of her trainer or family. After Holland's girlfriend leaves for a research project, Lily decides to take on her own project with a conservation group in North Carolina and tries to come to terms with her mother leaving their family when she was young in "A Taste for Lionfish." Bergman's novella "Indigo Run" might be my favorite piece in the collection. Helena-Raye Glass finds herself unexpectedly pregnant and married as Skip Spangler considers selling her family home generations later. Each of these protagonists is wondering what it would mean and what it would feel like to put themselves first, to follow their own desires, and to leave the burden of care and the expectations of others behind them.

How Strange A Season
By Megan Mayhew Bergman
Scribner March 2022
320 pages
Read via Netgalley

This book of short stories along with a novella personify the struggle that people have to balance it all when left with the expectations of others and their need to meet their own desires. These expectations were problematic and tied to an inheritance of sorts for each story whether it be something physical, or something steeped entirely in emotion. The novella and the final story were my favorites parts of this book. I would personally love to read more about the characters in the novella in the future. If you are looking for something intelligent and rich, this is a great book to read. Thanks for the ARC, NetGalley.

Stories about women that are haunting. Inheritance, a plantation, a glass house, and a ranch. Great writing, interesting stories.

“𝑨 𝒍𝒂𝒅𝒚 𝒊𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒍𝒂𝒔𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑰 𝒘𝒂𝒏𝒕 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒕𝒐 𝒃𝒆!” 𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒎𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒚𝒆𝒍𝒍𝒆𝒅 𝒃𝒂𝒄𝒌. “𝑾𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒈𝒐𝒐𝒅 𝒅𝒊𝒅 𝒊𝒕 𝒅𝒐 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒎𝒆?”

This collection of stories by Megan Mayhew Bergman is about what we drag around, our broken love lives, our damaged families, our history. It’s about needful hearts, negotiations between partners, the deepest lows and highest of highs. The struggle with self-worth, feeling like an imposter in one’s own life and building walls or terrariums to control the only things one can. More importantly there are stories of mistakes and lost chances.

In Workhorse, a divorcée makes large scale plant installations after buying a boutique floral business from the money her mother left her. Stuck dealing with her father, who is planning his return home to Sardinia and has always steamrolled his family with his large personality and needs, she wants space, to make her own choices, to live a creative life. He feels she just wants him gone. Disappointed by her ex and his addiction, things get more challenging, not less. In Wife Days, Farrah grows up watching her mother and grandmother butt heads about how her mother is raising her. Structure versus a non-traditional, bohemian life, when all she wants is to be underwater, cutting a path swimming. Even if she knows she is an invasive species in the river. In adulthood, she is married to a ‘fresh, very controlled person’ living the privileged life in a McMansion. Is she happy? What happened during her messy years? Other stories are about having control, the upper hand, as in one tale a woman uses her mother’s Earth House to help people release rage by crushing things. She also ponders the cycles of leaving and staying. My favorite story was Inheritance where the main character, Hayes, inherits her grandmother’s glass house in California, perched on a cliff overlooking the Pacific. Having admired her grandmother, Paulina’s, courage to shuck expectations and make her own terms of existence (leaving Hayes’s mother behind in the process) she only now begins to see that she may not have known her at all. Is the future a comfort, where everything remains unknown, or does dwelling in the past, with all its familiar devils, make for a more content world?

There are stories about the ecosystem like in A Taste For Lionfish and the destruction they cause but also human failure as the character signs up to fill time after the end of a relationship. There is an orchard in Peaches where a woman sacrifices her own future happiness for family who may not give a damn about salvation. Kin that feel like a lost cause, it’s so bad her mother even thinks her own son could be the strangler. Land called Stillwood where misfortune seems to shadow the people like a curse, it is a former plantation and all that implies. Here love feels more like entrapment. Pregnancy begets marriage, a child is born and depression follows. The wife/mother ends up in a sanatorium while her husband finds a small measure of happiness with the wet nurse (who has her own baby to attend to), finally feels like Stillwood is rightfully his, until she returns. The little girl, Skip, grows up wild in spirit like her mother and conflicted about who her loyalty should be with. She has, essentially, two mothers. It is a life of betrayal, loss, and self-lies. Stillwood feels like an evil place, the wet nurse always felt it too and the river, the river holds secrets. This story is the longest and reads like a novel, rich in characters. People who fear they are living under punishment for the things their ancestors have done yet unable or unwilling to free themselves. The final story is about a hag, cousin of Eve. A being who calls the winds to howl for her suffering.

It’s a good read, an intelligent exploration on love, what we owe it. Make no mistake, it’s about how love is measured, particularly in women. How uneven all variety of partnerships are. Why does affection seem to rely on what others are getting out of you? Here, people are affirming their love and loyalty, burying their happiness for others, often settling, or rebelling against tradition and often suffering for it. They bear the weight of the past, usually in the form of bloodlines and family demands. It sometimes did feel like the author is serving up revenge and punishment for the sins of the past, a history that descendants didn’t have a hand in yet seem doomed for. Still, it was engaging and smart.

Publication Date: March 29, 2022

Scribner

I’m not usually a short story fan, as I like to delve deep into the richness and complexity of a long book. But this one had me hooked from the first page.
The short stories in this book depict women in different stations in life and the issues they are facing from past generations' inheritances. Showcasing each woman’s strength in adversity, Mayhew Bergman gives some semblance of power back to the women searching for happiness, even if that power is short-lived. They are often reminded of the discouragements and darkness of past generations and constantly need to make difficult decisions that may negatively affect their lives and future generations.

I connected most with the first story about a daughter still trying to gain her fathers' affection even though she is grown. It was such a sad, but sweet story that I wished had gone on a bit longer than it did.

ARC was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

A gem of a collection of short stories.Women are revealed bin all their emotions.An author who writes lyrically who draws you in to the lives of her characters.An author I will be recommending and following.#netgalley #scribner

What a perfect collection!

Bergman's stories are classic, full of introspection and insight and honesty. Most are concerned with women, at some juncture of significance in their life, typically pertaining in some way to their knotted relationship to men, be it their fathers or husbands or exes. Bergman is a master at navigating the fine-tuned emotions of her characters. But many stories are deeply tethered to the landscape, and wildlife, as well. From the flowers and peaches to the tender inclusion of a mule early on. It's an excellent collection, linked by these concerns.

Bergman is a very talented short story teller, and this collection is further proof. Consistent quality writing. The focus here is women. Recommended.

I really appreciate the free ARC for review!!

A fascinating collection of short stories and a novella with a common thread of introspective women in pivotal moments and/or dealing with ennui. Beautiful and thoughtful writing, if perhaps a bit uneven in that a couple of the stories felt rushed after a promising build up. I was most fond of “Wife Days” and “The Heirloom”. Each story had a vividly described location and it made me long to travel. Megan Mayhew Bergman is a talent and I recommend this to anyone seeking a moody, intellectual read featuring complex women..

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to review this ARC.

How Strange a Season by Megan Mayhew Bergman is a series of short stories that blend together to wrap the reader in a sense of time-travel to a faded Southern United States. Recalling glory times of the Antebellum South in a voice that both mocks and appreciates the complicated past. Some of the shorter stories left me wanting to ask questions and others felt just enough. A definite read for anyone that enjoys prose that doesn't veer into the lyrical.

HOW STRANGE A SEASON is a hugely enjoyable collection highly recommended for fans of short stories and literary fiction.

Bergman's narratives are sharp and witty, replete with intelligent and sensitive observations about the world around us. Realistic in nature, the stories deftly delve into different time periods and introduce us to strong women who are finding their way. Threads of climate change and grappling with surprising or unwelcome inheritances are woven through the stories, as well as the theme of personal responsibility. I particularly enjoyed the feminist angle and Bergman's treatment of power and the re-balancing thereof.

There is humor here as well. I was surprised that, at times, I laughed out loud. I read "Wife Days" while on a writing retreat and ended up reading portions of it aloud to the group.

Bergman does a great job of making sure the stories are varied in subject matter and tone. Even though several stories involve absent mothers, you don't feel as though you are reading the same story merely packaged in a slightly different way. Each story stands alone and comes across as fully fleshed out.

Bergman's writing is crisp and sophisticated. I will look forward to her next book.

I've been anticipating this book since 2016 when I learned Bergman was working on a novel. That excitement only grew after reading her first short story collection last fall and loving it. And while How Strange a Season wasn't entirely what I'd hoped for, it was great getting back into reading Bergman and seeing how her writing's changed in the last decade.

Some stories were stand-out, like "The Heirloom" and "Workhorse," while others didn't have as much momentum as I thought they could have. Most also felt tonally and thematically the same. Indigo Run took a little getting into but had so much potential, and I loved the writing of it, the complexities of the characters—I just think it would have been more successful as a full-fledged novel.

I received an ARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.