Games and Rituals is a new collection of short stories by Katherine Heiny, author of Early Morning Riser and Standard Deviation. Like her novels, the stories center around everyday people figuring out their everyday relationships… but they always include a twist to throw you off balance, and a generous helping of tenderness to set you back right again. There’s Erica, who helps her father after he accidentally eats his hearing aid; there’s Marlee, who wears her old bridesmaid’s dress to work one morning in attempt to gain closure from a regretful wedding misstep; there’s William, who thinks his wife is trying to Marie-Kondo him out of his own home; and so many other memorable characters dealing with infatuation, grief, regret and change. Through these wild yet deeply familiar stories, Heiny shows us how we invent all sorts of games and rituals in order to feel like we have control over life’s inevitable messiness.

I don’t often read short story collections—I find I either go for an essay collection if I want short bursts of writing, or a novel if I want fiction—but I absolutely loved Games and Rituals. Heiny’s writing is sharp and funny, and her characters feel like people I would know in real life. She specializes in characters who are perfectly imperfect, and she always finds the redeeming qualities in those who seem unlikable at first—the husband having an affair or the woman who scorns her small hometown and all the people in it. With each story she crafts a fully-formed little world, and it felt so easy to dive into a character’s life and stay for a night or a week or a couple months, however long the story allowed. I finished Games and Rituals feeling not uplifted, exactly, but grateful for my own everyday life, even the messy parts. Highly recommend.

I’d recommend this book to…

• Anyone who loves creative stories with deep emotional impact… it’s similar in style to Tenth of December by George Saunders
• Anyone looking for a shrewd, wryly humorous read… it’s similar in tone to Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
• Anyone interested in the ways we navigate tricky relationships… it’s similar in theme to Bomb Shelterby Mary Laura Philpott