Difficult Women

The writing was, undeniably, spectacular. But the meat of the novel was cruel and dark and l hated it with every part of my being. I don't want to read about these kinds of things, not because I deny things like these stories can happen, but because such pain was read instead of such joy. I'd rather spend my time elsewhere.

Roxane Gay is always phenomenal, but these stories may be her best yet. She writes directly into the heart of the most painful human experiences, and the beauty of her prose is only matched by the clarity of her insight.

It is truly amazing that Roxane can be both prolific and peerless. Her writing is so engrossing - I am not usually a fan of short stories because I enjoy immersing myself in either a long memoir, non-fiction or fiction, but I will read anything written by Roxane.

I am a big fan of Ms. Gray's "An Untamed State" and I approached this book of short stories with a great deal of expectation. But, they are very different books. "Difficult Women" has a cluttered feel. Some of the stories simply do not work. They are too one dimensional. But, there are also some gems. "I Will Follow You," La Negra Blanca," and the prize-winning "North Country" come to mind. My favorite might be "Break All The Way Down." The latter, like all of the better stories, is very much about loss and love and pain. Throughout the book, there is much about both betrayal and redemption. There is also a great deal of sex throughout, and for Ms. Gray sex and pain are never very far apart. Despite its flaws, "Difficult Women" is worth the journey, and by the way, the women in the book by and large live up to the title.

I'm in awe of Roxane Gay. If this collection had gone on forever I would never grow tired of it. It contains the depths of the human condition in all its darkness, loneliness, quirkiness and indecency.

These are stories about people (mostly women) seeking to fill their hollow spaces however they can. They're gritty and direct and real and utterly devoid of sentimentality. Gay's characters accept life for what it is—all its ugliness, all its complexity—and there's something strangely refreshing and comforting about that.

The subject matter is demanding and unrelenting; this is not a happy collection, though it's by no means maudlin. Being human isn't pretty, but there's beauty in that. If that statement resonates with you, so too will these fierce, gutting stories.

A collection of short stories, Difficult Women exactly what it promises. Stories about difficult women. Varying socio-economic statuses and difficulties, all these women live rare (I hope), quirky, disturbing lives.

There's the woman who goes to a fight-club in her off time, with a co-worker who is the only person who understands her. There are the sisters who were abducted as children, and now, as grown women, are inseparable, although one is married. There is the black engineer who moves to Northern Michigan in an attempt to put her past behind her. There is a couple who deal with their infertility during hunting season.

A couple of times in Difficult Women Gay creates mini-collections, using the same setting to tell readers stories of the women who live there. She uses the small, Upper Michigan town to tell a variety of stories of women trapped in a smallish northern town. She also uses a gated community (I think it's gated; it's that type of community, at any rate) to tell a variety of stories from that community.

This group of stories are sometimes difficult and some of the women are a little off-kilter (again, I hope), but they're enlightening, and my favorite kind of stories. Because, as crazy and difficult as these women are, Gay does a great job of explaining them a bit. By going to the dark corners of her character's minds, she often tells us why some these women are so difficult (although some of them are just crazy, tbh).

I say this every time I read a collection of stories, but short stories aren't my favorite. But somehow this one really connected with me. Maybe because I'm a woman and I can be difficult. Maybe because it does tell stories of women doing slightly (and some not-so-slightly) crazy things because its the only way their lives can work and make sense. And because it's so different.

It's beautiful and raw and dark and real. I cannot imagine living some (most) of these lives, but Gay helps me understand them. At times these stories made me down-right uncomfortable (as the mother of daughters, especially), but that's what good fiction does sometimes. It takes you to places you don't go in everyday life, opening up new and different views.

Difficult Women was a wonderful start to my reading life in 2017. Quick, different, and interesting. I highly recommend it!

***I received an advanced digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review***

This was my first time reading Roxane Gay and I held high hopes for this collection. However, I am thoroughly disappointed now that I have finished it. The title would have you assume that the book would be about women that society has deemed difficult, as it tends to do with women who fall outside of societal and cultural norms in terms of gender conformity. However, a lot of the women seem to be letting life be difficult to them and not the other way around. They let life (and the men in their lives) beat them up for various reasons.

Quite a few of them are under some self-imposed penance for things that weren’t their fault to begin with. All their difficulties are connected to men or the loss of children, and there are not any stories where the women are not tied to a man in some way, shape, or form. I understand that such stories are necessary and that discussing the loss of a child is important, but Gay doesn’t approach the topic from a new standpoint. Instead, the women seem to blame themselves for the loss of their children which has been the standard throughout history.

There is also an ugliness that follows you throughout the book as some of the women deal with physical and sexual trauma from their pasts. Such narratives are necessary (because life is not perfect) but there is nothing inspiring or slightly uplifting or humorous that comes afterwards to lift away the strain from the reminder of how cruel and awful life can be. Understandably, that doesn’t happen in real life either, but again Gay doesn’t approach such hard and ugly tales from a new perspective or way of storytelling. The abundance of abuse, of the women thinking they deserved it, became sickening after a while. I understand it is a very real mindset, that they deserve such mistreatment, but there was nothing to offset it or free some of the women from such a toxic mindset and show that there can be healing. Instead, it was just there, story after story.

Overall, I may have liked four or five stories out of this entire collection–a collection that seems haphazardly thrown together with stories the writer had published elsewhere at different points in time. Some of these stories felt misplaced in this collection, they were strange–awkwardly so–and did not stand out much; or if they did it was due to the strangeness of them being in the collection in the first place. This collection would have done better had the theme of abuse and deafening sorrow not been so strong throughout. Stories of women do not need men at every turn and corner to be interesting–nor do they need women to be painted as broken and hurting to teach any lessons. Let women be difficult because that is who they are and not because that is how they’ve let life be to them.

I never finished it. I kept waiting to see something that could have garnered such praise, but it isn't there as far as I am concerned. I am well aware that there are people in the world who do mean and hateful and despicable things. With all of that being presented in short stories, there seems to have been no resolution to the issues. I will not purchase anything written by this author in the future.

I absolutely hated this book. The description and title are extremely misleading. While there are a few interesting stories, the vast majority of them are monotonous, bland, poorly written, and continue to harp on the same hackneyed depressing themes and same few simple character types (the "bad" man, the "damaged" woman are the main two, with a lot of demeaning, depressing sex in every story). I get the feeling the author is trying to make some poignant points about humanity and connection, but really it's just one sad, contrived, hopeless, meaningless situation after another with flat characters (more like caricatures) who continue to act out trope after trope and never surprise us or seem real. Most of the women have zero agency and just let awful things sweep them along, and never seem to care or try to improve their situation. They have no personality and no real sense of self. They just throw themselves into having more bad sex with more bad people. From this, we are supposed to be moved? Some of the stories were SO bad they seemed to be taken straight out of a freshman level college writing course. There is an actual story called "Bad Priest" that is about a bad priest who has a girlfriend he has sex with in his church. That's it. Nothing more. SO PROFOUND OMG.

Don't waste your time or money on this clunker of a collection. Can't believe some of these ever got published to begin with.

EDIT: Okay, on further reflection, some of the stories are actually good. "The Sacrifice of Darkness" is truly a wonderful story that is totally lacking in the elements I describe above that caused me to dislike the rest so much. I also recommend "North Country". These stories are outliers in a very uneven collection. I don't recommend reading it cover to cover but there are a few interesting ones.

Reviewing anticipated works like these is always difficult, especially if you're reviewing the book before it's been officially published. I'm not sure about others, but I always feel a tremendous amount of pressure - I want to give my honest opinion, but I also want to be as objective as possible and explain, more broadly, what the book is about and who the audience is.

I'd heard stellar things about Roxane Gay's BAD FEMINIST. It's been on my to-read list for ages. I was thrilled to be approved for an advance reader copy of her latest book, DIFFICULT WOMEN. Women are told from childhood not to be "difficult": to be soft-spoken, easy-going, and unassuming. The title, DIFFICULT WOMEN, made me think of Elizabeth Wurtzel's similarly titled book, BITCH: IN PRAISE OF DIFFICULT WOMEN. I anticipated stories of women, all kinds of women, who don't fit the stereotypical mold but are still women - living breathing women - with hopes, and stories, and dreams.

What I got...was not quite that.

Ordinarily with anthologies, I'll do a breakdown of each story, provide a summary and my thoughts, and then a rating. Since I'm a little burned out on anthologies, this anthology in particular, I'm not going to be as thorough (although if you're curious, check out my status updates for this book - I assigned each story a rating there). Plus, I think I'm going to be pushing the char limit as is.

DIFFICULT WOMEN is an odd collection, with stories ranging in length from a single page to almost thirty. Some of the stories are magic-realism, others uncomfortably realistic. It felt like the unifying theme of this book was that women are victims and men are the perpetrators. There was a whole lot of rape, abuse, and objectification in this book. A whole lot. It got really exhausting after a while, and maybe that was the point. I did wonder if DIFFICULT WOMEN was a bold middle finger to the people out there who blame the victim, especially when the victims are female, and call them "difficult" without caring to understand what caused them to be that way. If that is the case, then the author accomplished that goal...but to a desolate and rather miserable end.

I Will Follow You was my favorite story, and the one that I found the most emotionally engaging. It's about two sisters who suffered a horrible trauma when they were younger. Now that one of them is married the nature of their relationship is changing, but the closeness between them is undeniable. This story made me tear up, because it's so powerful, and just great all around.

Water, All Its Weight is a bizarre magic realism story about a girl who is followed by rain all the time, and how the water pushes her away from loved ones. I'm sure it's meant to symbolize something, but I wasn't sure what. The style of this one kind of reminded me of Laura Esquivel's work. I like Esquivel, so I liked this story, even if I didn't fully understand what it meant.

The Mark of Cain is about a woman who is married to a twin. He switches place with his twin sometimes for fun, little knowing that his wife is well aware of what he's doing and secretly prefers the twin. When her husband is playing musical beds, he trades places with his twin's girlfriend, who isn't aware of what is going on. This is the first of many a-hole husband cheating stories.

Difficult Women got me really excited because it's the titular story! I think the intent of this one is to humanize the derogatory stereotypes that are sometimes used to label women by providing them with a backstory that could conceivably explain their present state. I thought this one was decent, but the whole time I was aware of the irony that many of these backstories were stereotypes themselves.

Florida is split into several different narratives, and takes place in the town of Naples, Florida, and all the wealthy women who live there (as well as some of the not-so-wealthy ones). Using these narratives, the author makes some interesting statements about race and class.

La Negra Blanca is a story about a pole dancer who is half-black, half-white, and using her career to pay for her college education (which is also super cliche, but this is possibly because I've read way too many new adult books, and this is the go-to money making scheme in that genre). She has two men in her life: one of them is Latino and poor, the other one is rich and white. It is a brutally tragic and unfair story, and I think if I had to choose, this is the story that made me the angriest.

Baby Arm is a story I blanked out on. It wasn't very good. A weird romance.

North Country was another favorite, because it's a beautiful romance that also highlights many of the nuanced and subtle acts of racism people of color experience on a day to day basis. After the first story in this collection, I think I'd say this was my second favorite.

How was a weird story. Women with sh*tty lives, surrounded by sh*tty men. One of women is a lesbian, which was kind of nice (diversity!). I wished the relationship between them had been developed more. Based on what happened in the story, I expected more of an emotional connection between them.

Requiem for a Glass Heart was another story where I wasn't sure if it was supposed to be symbolic and I just wasn't understanding the symbolism. It felt like it was about a family that was just going through the motions, and living without passion. Okay.

In the Event of My Father's Death is another story that I blanked out on. I'm looking at my status update for it right now and apparently it had a twist ending, but I don't remember what it was.

Break All the Way Down is a story about grief and loss. I appreciated what it was trying to do, but didn't really care for the execution. Basically: woman cannot cope with the loss of her child.

Bad Priest is exactly what it sounds like. It's about a priest who is having sex with a much younger woman. They have an odd dynamic. There is a lot of sex. Sex is a recurring theme in this book, too, BTW. I wasn't expecting so much erotic content. Nearly every story in this collection gets graphic.

Open Marriage was one of the very short stories I alluded to in the beginning. This one, like Bad Priest, is also self-explanatory, but it feels snarkier than many of the stories before it.

Pat felt well-intentioned, but also came across as condescending. I liked the message of befriending people who aren't much to look at on the surface, but the reason given for this is kind of insulting. It isn't quite clear of the person who is giving this message is being condemned or not for it, either. The author is really good at writing with a "poker face." I really had trouble gauging her intent.

Best Features really reminded me of the book 13 WAYS OF LOOKING AT A FAT GIRL, a book I really enjoyed despite its dark and frequently uncomfortable content. It's a story about an overweight girl who feels like she has to sleep with men to get them to be with her...but she's also self-aware enough about it to feel a biting anger that made her interesting.

Bone Density is story of two academics who are married...and cheating on each other. Despite this, they still love each other (sort of) but the proverbial spark is fading. Odd.

I am a Knife is another magic realism story. I actually liked this one more before the magic realism element came into play. After that, it got weird. And kind of gory. o_0

The Sacrifice of Darkness is another magic realism story that doesn't even feel like it belongs in this collection. It's about a miner who pulls an "Icharus" one day, and flies so close to the sun that he puts it out of the sky. His legacy lives on through his son, who has to live with all the resentment of the people in his town. It also has a love story. I kind of liked this one, despite its strangeness.

Noble Things was my least favorite. It was boring. I skimmed it. Don't ask me about this one.

Strange Gods was probably the third-best story in the bunch. One of the flaws of this book is that many similar stories are placed in close proximity to each other - such as How and In the Event of My Father's Death - so that they end up running together. I did, however, like that the two most realistic and emotionally gripping stories were placed like bookends at the beginning and the end. Strange Gods is a story about rape, and how the effects of it can ripple throughout one's life.

Like I said before, I feel like this collection is supposed to embody the anger and helplessness that arise because of sexism and misogyny. It is a hopeless and heartbreaking book. I did wish that there were some uplifting or more complex stories in this book, however, like women who are working in careers mostly dominated by men, or women who are starting major or minor rebellions, or trans women, or women who don't wear makeup or don't feel the need to be pretty. I did like the attempt at intersectionality, and appreciated how many of these stories were about women of color specifically (with a few lesbian storylines thrown in), but I felt like this collection could have been so much more.

I'm not mad at DIFFICULT WOMEN and I do think it will stir up some interesting and important discussions, but it wasn't what I was expecting or hoping for.

Thanks to Netgalley/the publisher for the free copy!

2.5 to 3 out of 5 stars.

Gutting. That's what this collection of short stories is. One story after the next left me gutted, almost always uncomfortable, and often disgusted and dismayed.

Though I had heard high praise for Gay's work, this was my first experience with her writing, and I found myself initially racing through the stories, impressed with her incredibly strong writing and characterization. On more than one occasion, I had to put the book down and walk away from it for a bit because the content was so searing and uncomfortable, but in an important way. But then, the story lines and the themes and the horrible abuses suffered by each character became repetitive. I felt gutted after each story still, yes, but I felt weary, and the impact of the previous stories lessened as they all began to run together in my mind.

Gay doesn't dance around any of the topics she addresses in these stories, all about women who are not truly difficult but who have been placed in difficult or cruel situations. Every story includes at least some detailed or graphic sexual content, and other triggering content includes physical abuse, sexual assault, rape, gang rape, child sexual assault, and pregnancy or infant/toddler loss. These are not stories for those looking for something uplifting about women who have pulled themselves out of difficult or painful situations. These are stories that say this: Life is painful and hard. Life is unfair. This is what our lives as women often are. Gay doesn't gloss over any of the pain and injustices women experience, most often at the hands of men, and I don't think she intends there to be any calming or comforting messages that come from this, other than the possibility of seeing a shared experience in the characters' lives.

I would recommend reading a few of these stories at a time and then coming back to it later or using a single story as part of a college course's reading selections, but not all of them at the same time.

I had the privilege of hearing Roxane Gay speak at York College of Pennsylvania after the release of her book Bad Feminist. She was witty and empowering. I learned quite a bit that evening. When Netgalley offered her new book Difficult Women to review, I jumped on it. I am so glad I did.

Difficult Women by Roxane Gay was terrifying, wonderful, confusing, eye opening, lyrical, compelling, and damn good story telling. Difficult Women is a collection of twenty-one stories.

I Will Follow You - heartbreaking but hopeful in the incredible strength of twin girls together. It left me wondering could they survived if they were separated totally? I felt as though there was a message here that women are stronger when they have each other’s backs regardless of the difference in their circumstances.

Water, All Its Weight - contained beautiful prose but had an abrupt end which left me unsure of the meaning.

The Mark of Cain - was really creepy in a stephen king kind of way. You have to read it for yourself.

Difficult Women - contains the following sections: Loose Women, Frigid Women, Crazy Women, Mothers, Dead Girls. Each section helps view the women in a non-judgemental way. It gave me a lot to think about.

Florida - Looks at a gated community from all levels, the rich residents, the service personnel, and the maids. One of the residents is newly moved in and is set apart because she is a first wife and also not a size 4. Seeing the community from all the different perspectives is eye opening and interesting.

La Negra Blanca - this story infuriated and educated me.

North Country - is set at the Michigan Institute of Technology where Ms. Gay did do her graduate work. she talks about how being one of the few black faculty she is asked, “Are you from Detroit”. Her answer is a damning comment on the college’s culture.

The other stories are:
Baby Arm
How
Requiem for a Glass Heart
In the Event of my Father’s Death
Break All the Way Down
Bad Priest
Open Marriage
A Pat
Best Features
Bone Density
I am a Knife
The Sacrifice of Darkness
Noble Things
Strange Gods

Difficult Women is a book I will read over and over. I would like to read it with someone and be able to discuss it. I feel as though I have more to learn from it. I recommend Difficult Women to anyone who wants excellent stories as well as stories that touch your soul.

Difficult Women is a difficult read. It is raw and real in a way that will shake readers to their core. Gay’s stories are the society no one wants to acknowledge. The open secrets we all know exist but, for whatever reason, can’t be spoken in the daylight. If you are a reader that needs an uplifting moment, many of the stories won’t provide that emotional boost.

The focus of Gay’s stories are most certainly the women. Gay’s characters are diverse. As women we often take on responsibility for things that go wrong. We hear our mothers ask what that woman was doing with that man alone when she’s assaulted or an analysis of her behavior with men and how it was “bound to happen.” Even as it doesn’t pertain to violence, Gay’s women take the weight of actions not their own. Complicating the female perspective are the rough hewn and undeveloped men direct from central casting. There’s no need to stray outside of the bonds of evil because even in moments of pleasure there’s nothing but pain. In the stories of violence, the men are horrible and maniacal lacking only a mustache to twirl. They are wholly vile without need of development.

There are times when the dialogue is trite and the situations are cliche but overall this is a book well worth reading and that will stay with those who have a social consciousness. We must do better. If you’re looking for a good read and don’t mind cringing, pick Difficult Women up today.

I'm a veteran reader of feminist fiction; I started in the 1970's with Doris Lessing and Grace Paley, and in the years since I've read the likes of Gayl Jones, Blanche McCrary Boyd, Jayne Anne Phillips, Mary Gaitskill, and Joy Williams as well as the more mainstream voices like Anne Tyler, Alice Walker and Gloria Naylor. The common thread among all these writers has been a sure grasp of the sanctity of the individual, and a willingness to probe, frankly and unapologetically, the lines of emotional and sexual relationships. Feminist writers are willing to push the envelope.

Roxane Gay is a worthy addition to the canon. Her prose is fluid and engaging, her grasp of narrative is completely sure-handed. She seduces the reader as she illuminates the paths she leads the characters through. All the stories in this collection are powerful and compelling, and they definitely ring true in the context of the chaotic times we live in, with the realities many women are forced to endure.

I give "Difficult Women" four stars. I found the straightforward stories worked better than Gay's forays into postmodernism.

4.5 Stars

This collection of short stories depicting the complexities of a woman’s mind and heart are written with a clear lens pointed towards their innermost thoughts. There are prevailing themes of brutal abuse, sex, love, and male dominance weaving their way in and out of these tales.

The evisceration of wild game sit in strange juxtaposition with the women whose lives have been gutted in some way by tragedy and exposed as fragile beings who are fighting to regain their foothold on a tenuous existence.

In I Will Follow You, two sisters refuse to leave each other’s sides after a harrowing ordeal of abuse and become a package deal when one of the sister’s marries. The Mark of Cain is about a young woman’s secret knowledge that the man she married likes to swap places with his identical twin brother. The ending is reflective of one of the most obvious consequences. Requiem for a Glass Heart is a fantasy piece about a stone thrower who falls in love with a woman made out of glass. Break All the Way Down illustrates a mother’s anguish after losing her only child to a violent and horrific accident. She seeks out pain and abuse as much for self-punishment as a way to stay tethered to the world while simultaneously refusing to accept love and forgiveness until a new child enters her life.

Broken and damaged women come forward to share their experiences and tell their stories. Endings with no real resolutions speaks to the imperativeness of protection and guardianship of self. The women in these stories have suffered, in many cases by the hands of cruel men. Who they become in the aftermath of their horrors were some of the most fascinating parts of their stories.

BRB Rating: Read It

DIFFICULT WOMEN

Roxane Gay is a great and wonderful writer; I love her words, her thoughts, her down-to-earth attitude regarding life. However, these short stories are rough and not for everyone. They hit hard, are honest and revealing, raw, tough, and made me feel somewhat uncomfortable. But just maybe ? that is Ms. Gay's point --

These stories all seemed to gel together and in my humble opinion, could have been about the same character. Most of these women find themselves in horrible and difficult situations with men and/or women who make their lives a living hell. Or just maybe these women make their own lives a living hell. You decide when you read the book. These stories hit hard, right in your gut, and that's okay. Maybe I would have enjoyed them more if I had spaced out reading them instead of reading them all at one time, one after the other.

Most of the stories dealt with women who were in horrible relationships; some of them wanting and aching to be physically and emotionally beat up. Some of these women were victims of situations and were able to move on. Some had horrible parents, horrible husbands, horrible home lives. So many sad souls.

There is plenty of sexual content which didn't bother me and seemed to be necessary for the story lines, but most of the sex was abusive, mean, cruel, and cold. Some readers may find these situations very troubling.

This is not to say I didn't enjoy this book, but I didn't enjoy as many stories as I would have liked to. I really liked THE MARK OF CAIN and FLORIDA, but out of 21 short stories, that isn't too many.

I feel as if I am in the minority with a three star rating but I found this book OKAY -- hence the three stars. I feel Roxane Gay has been around a rough block and writes about it in her stories. This isn't to say I wouldn't give one of her other works a reading chance, but I would have to be in the right frame of mind.

** Trigger warning for domestic violence, child abuse, and rape. **

“There once was a man. There is always some man.”

“You too have always been popular. I have seen the evidence in your childhood bedroom, meticulously preserved by your mother. Even now, you have packs of men following you, willing to make you their strange god. That is the only thing about you that scares me.”

“I want a boy who will bring me a baby arm.”

“Honey, you’re not crazy. You’re a woman.”

DIFFICULT WOMEN brings together twenty-one short stories by Roxane Gay, all of which have previously been published elsewhere (or multiple elsewheres), most in slightly different forms and some under different titles. (I included the TOC at the bottom of this review; alternate titles are listed last, in parentheses.) However, the publications are so varied that it’s unlikely that you’ve seen, read, and/or own them all.

This is actually rather surprising to me, since the stories – published over a span of ~5 years – gel so well together. It really feels like each one was written specifically with this anthology in mind. The collection’s namesake, “Difficult Women,” perfectly encapsulates the spirit of the whole. Like the short story, this is book about loose women and frigid women; difficult women and crazy women; mothers and wives, daughters and dead girls. Women who have faced the unspeakable – rape and sexual assault; miscarriages or the death of a child; abuse and self-harm; alcoholism and alienation – and come out the other side. Not unscathed, but alive. These are stories of survival.

Usually I find anthologies to be somewhat uneven, but not so here. Every story grabs you by the heart and threatens to squeeze until it pops, right there in your chest cavity. Gay’s writing is raw and naked; grim, yet somehow, impossibly, imbued with hope. While some are straight-up contemporary, other tales are a strange, surreal mix of the real and unreal: In “I Am a Knife,” a woman fantasizes about cutting her twin’s fetus out of her body and transferring it to her own, the way she once did with the heart of a drunk driver who collided with their car, nearly killing her sister.

Even stranger is “The Sacrifice of Darkness,” in which the miner Hiram Hightower uses his savings to buy an airship to the sun. Upon approach, he inadvertently sucks up all its light, to fill the gaping hole that loneliness and a life spent in darkness carved into his spirit. His wife and son – and his son’s wife and their child – would pay the price for his selfishness. And yet they also hold the promise of a brighter future for all. Therein lies the impossible hope.

I also loved “Noble Things,” a dystopia in which a second secession of the South led to the New Civil War. Parker is bound to the South not by his beliefs, but by family: after a career in the US military that included tours in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran, his father the General led the Southern army to victory. Nevertheless, appalled by the scarcity, poverty, and ignorance in the South, Parker and wife Anna sent their son North, to live with her parents. Will he have the courage to embrace one of his family’s convictions and join Anna and “the boy” on the other side of the divide?

As I read through the stories, several common themes began to emerge: many are set in the North Country, against the backdrop of mining; incorporate the death of a child; and/or feature twins. Rape is also a common element, and one that Gay handles with care and nuance. Gay avoids graphic details, instead centering attention on the survivors and their methods of coping with the trauma and navigating this new reality. Given current events – I’m penning this review a mere three days after the 2016 election – these stories are more important, and potentially triggering, than ever.

The anthology opens with “I Will Follow You,” a sucker punch to the heart. When Savvie was ten, she was abducted by a pedophile; older sister Carolina, a witness to the crime, threw herself in the van so that her sister wouldn’t have to survive it alone. Years later, they are free and financially independent women – who never leave each others’ sides. “La Negra Blanca” tackles the fetishization of women of color, misogynoir, white male privilege, and the objectification of sex workers, while “How” is about twins from Michigan who figure out how to escape their broken lives (don’t be afraid to leave all your baggage behind, abusive family members included).

The loop is closed with the final story, “Strange Gods,” in which a woman who was gang-raped as a child attempts to open herself up to a healthy relationship after years of abusive relationships. The imagery here is especially compelling/horrifying, as she was lured to a deer blind by a boy she considered a friend, hunted like prey, violated, and then splayed open like a slaughtered deer on the exam table. This story in particular should be disseminated to every police department with a rape kit backlog; picture: repeated forced readings, à la A CLOCKWORK ORANGE.

DIFFICULT WOMEN is a difficult book to read, but one that’s vital and necessary and timely in a way that I didn’t anticipate when I requested a copy on Netgalley.

Table of Contents
I Will Follow You * 1 (“The Weight of Water”)
Water, All Its Weight * 23
The Mark of Cain * 29
Difficult Women * 35 (“Important Things”)
FLORIDA * 45 (“Group Fitness”)
La Negra Blanca * 61
Baby Arm * 77
North Country * 83
How * 101
Requiem for a Glass Heart * 117
In the Event of My Father’s Death * 125
Break All the Way Down * 129
Bad Priest * 149
Open Marriage * 159
A Pat * 161
Best Features * 163
Bone Density * 169
I Am a Knife * 179
The Sacrifice of Darkness * 189
Noble Things * 215
Strange Gods * 235
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 257
CREDITS 259

** Full disclosure: I received a free ARC for review through Netgalley. **

I saw Roxane Gay on Trevor Noah's show. I was so impressed I bought her book. It is a series of short stories and I loved them all. So I bought another of her books. Looks like I will keep going until I've read them all.

I'm such a fan of Roxane Gay. She writes like no one else. This short story collection is searing, beautiful, terrifying and frankly brilliant. You should know up front that this is a very difficult collection to read - the need for trigger warnings abounds. Almost every story explores a woman's life in searing detail and unflinching honesty. The women in this collection are shown in raw and real ways that you will feel in ways that make you uncomfortable and break your heart at all the same time.

Although not an easy read emotionally, it's worth every single moment of reading time. It's a tough read and not for everyone. I think my favorite story is the first which centers around two children who were abducted and held captive during which they were sexually abused. It tells the story of how that experience affects them for the years to come. Heartbreaking and haunting. I'd say that probably does a good job of describing much of this collection.

This collection isn't for everyone ... it's one that will not work for a lot of readers. So beware if you have delicate sensibilities. This may not be for you. However, if you can tolerate the content ... it's such a worthwhile read. It's beautifully written and so complex. I highly recommend it!

As the world reels from yet another major sexual assault scandal, here is a book filled to the brim with story after story of women and the men who hurt them. Not every story is about sexual assault, but they are all filled with pain and longing, twisted love and harmful relationships.

I found it most interesting that the book is called “Difficult Women,” because it puts the blame back on the feminine, as is so often the case–women who are trying to survive are “difficult” to deal with. Even though the stories are about these women, they often have the passive voice, and the men are the stronger characters–the aggressors, the initiators–they have the power, not always, but usually. They don’t necessarily, however, drive the story. It’s a very interesting contrast.

Even though the stories are individual shorts, there are several parallels: character names, places, themes. Gay has published these stories elsewhere, submitted them for awards, etc, so it would seem to me as if she took familiar threads and just wove them into different blankets to fit her creative thought process at the time. The result is Difficult Women, a collection of the same story repeated over and over in the lives of different women. It’s a cool and complex anthology.

There were some stories I loved, some I didn’t connect to at all. All of them have some kind of triggering element, so proceed with caution, especially for assault, abuse, and violence.

3.5★
"For difficult women, who should be celebrated for their very nature."
Roxane Gay's introduction.

I really liked the first stories – the writing, the characters, the situations. But as it went on, too many of the women (and the men and occasional friends) were like replicas of each other. Whether wealthy or dirt poor, they were difficult for those around them.

I also had the feeling that almost all the women seemed to be defined by the men in their lives. In some cases, they were men they had left, while many were men they were with but needed to leave.

The stories were punctuated with physical battering and sex, often combined. The thoughtful, sensitive people who helped offer sympathy or pick up the pieces afterwards did so by stroking, tracing lines on bodies, and ultimately bathing these walking wounded. It became a theme so much that I would wait for the bath scene. This was sometimes preceded or followed by yet another sex scene.

If I’d read a story or two in a publication, I would have thought they were terrific. Or a novella of the connected ones, maybe.

There are a couple of groups of connected stories, where the characters are all living in a Florida retirement community, for example, which created some added interest.

Then there are a few stories with twins or siblings close in age with strong connections to each other. There are pole dancers, short order cooks, a professor, and an engineer, among others. Many are looking for a way out of their current situation, but a lot are just resigned.

Here, two inseparable sisters are travelling across the country with the older one's boyfriend. The younger asks the older about him.

“She pressed her forehead against mine. Something wet and heavy caught in my throat. ‘Why him?’

‘I’d be no good to a really good man and Darryl isn’t really a bad man.’

I knew exactly what she meant.”

Granted, these girls, victims of childhood abduction, have better reason than most to accept safety over love. But how about Caridad? She works in a gym and has to fend off her charming boss.

“He held her elbow too firmly, his teeth bared, wet. He loved to recline on the wieght bench, spreading his legs wide. He always wore loose shorts and no underwear during their sessions, letting his limp cock hang lazily against his left thigh. No matter how much weight he lifted, he grunted extravagantly. Caridad pretended not to notice. . .

She pushed Sal away, negotiating the complexity of making her point without getting fired.”

She needs the job, and her boyfriend’s hardly worth going home to.

“They had been dating for four years and their relationship was mostly unremarkable. She was smart enough to want more but tired enough to accept the way things were.”

That pretty much sums up the situation in many stories. But there are a few where the women desperately seek to be hurt to offset other, unbearable pain. Like pinching your finger as soon as you stub your toe to take your mind off your toe. We keep trying to fool ourselves.

It makes for 'difficult' reading – beatings, punches, bruises, rough sex and rapes. Gay writes poignancy well and describes some very sensitive scenes, too. I will look for something else she’s written, because I like her writing. I just found this book uneven.

Thanks to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for the review copy from which I’ve quoted (so quotes may have changed.)

Roxane Gay’s DIFFICULT WOMEN makes for difficult reading. Which is not a bad thing. This collection is unequivocally excellent, but be aware: It is no easy read. In this short volume, Gay’s women experience rape, domestic violence, the loss of children and pregnancies, hopelessness, viciousness and a systemic helplessness in the face of these agonies. They also experience love, not the saccharine sort, but the soft love of a partner who understands the messiness of your soul, enduring love despite unceasing struggle, violent love that aches and burns, even --- and especially when --- they’re gone.

You may feel slightly ill reading these powerfully moving narratives --- I did --- because the realities they explore are sickening. At times, did I feel like it was too much? Yes, and I had to put the book down for several days and read something more warmly empowering than this shattering volume. But that doesn’t make it any less worthwhile. The stories are harshly unforgiving, with only a few breaths of joy. Yet this is the reality we inhabit, and for many women, these are the stories that don’t get told, that desperately need to be told, and Gay evokes them exquisitely.

DIFFICULT WOMEN is roughly urgent and skillfully timeless. Gay veers into the fantastic at times, weaving realistic stories through with metaphor and half-imagined imagery --- of a father who flew an air machine into the sun and doomed a town to darkness, of a stone-thrower married to a glass wife, of a woman who is a knife married to a man who is a gun. She entwines these clear and prescient images with stories rooted firmly in the banalities and stark intricacies of reality: a white man who cannot control himself to the detriment of a mixed-race woman who strips to save for school, a woman who watches her child die, a priest who can’t keep to the cloth, a woman who loses an unborn baby.

Gay’s voice is lyrical throughout, mesmeric and unflinching. Her voice is the throughline, along with the nature of her women. It is never her women who are difficult, but their circumstances. Planted, sowed and borne of and into soil that has been untenable for generations, Gay’s women live despite themselves, and their choices are never clean but always worth understanding. This collection shocks, despairs and triumphs. It does not ask you to think before you judge, to examine societal patterns and ingrained injustices. It presents moments in the lives of women who must exist within them, and allows the reader to sit with that reality. These stories are true, in the most important sense. We cannot pretend otherwise.

Do not pass this one over because it is a hard read; it should be. Narratives of domestic abuse, assault and trauma have been told before --- in fact, the contemporary canon is laden with them --- but the difference is in the frame. Roxane Gay refuses to exploit. She gives voice to the exploited, and those voices will ring clear in my head for weeks to come. I urgently hope more writers follow her lead.

Reviewed by Maya Gittelman

Roxane Gay’s DIFFICULT WOMEN makes for difficult reading. Which is not a bad thing. This collection is unequivocally excellent, but be aware: It is no easy read. In this short volume, Gay’s women experience rape, domestic violence, the loss of children and pregnancies, hopelessness, viciousness and a systemic helplessness in the face of these agonies. They also experience love, not the saccharine sort, but the soft love of a partner who understands the messiness of your soul, enduring love despite unceasing struggle, violent love that aches and burns, even --- and especially when --- they’re gone.

You may feel slightly ill reading these powerfully moving narratives --- I did --- because the realities they explore are sickening. At times, did I feel like it was too much? Yes, and I had to put the book down for several days and read something more warmly empowering than this shattering volume. But that doesn’t make it any less worthwhile. The stories are harshly unforgiving, with only a few breaths of joy. Yet this is the reality we inhabit, and for many women, these are the stories that don’t get told, that desperately need to be told, and Gay evokes them exquisitely.

DIFFICULT WOMEN is roughly urgent and skillfully timeless. Gay veers into the fantastic at times, weaving realistic stories through with metaphor and half-imagined imagery --- of a father who flew an air machine into the sun and doomed a town to darkness, of a stone-thrower married to a glass wife, of a woman who is a knife married to a man who is a gun. She entwines these clear and prescient images with stories rooted firmly in the banalities and stark intricacies of reality: a white man who cannot control himself to the detriment of a mixed-race woman who strips to save for school, a woman who watches her child die, a priest who can’t keep to the cloth, a woman who loses an unborn baby.

Gay’s voice is lyrical throughout, mesmeric and unflinching. Her voice is the throughline, along with the nature of her women. It is never her women who are difficult, but their circumstances. Planted, sowed and borne of and into soil that has been untenable for generations, Gay’s women live despite themselves, and their choices are never clean but always worth understanding. This collection shocks, despairs and triumphs. It does not ask you to think before you judge, to examine societal patterns and ingrained injustices. It presents moments in the lives of women who must exist within them, and allows the reader to sit with that reality. These stories are true, in the most important sense. We cannot pretend otherwise.

Do not pass this one over because it is a hard read; it should be. Narratives of domestic abuse, assault and trauma have been told before --- in fact, the contemporary canon is laden with them --- but the difference is in the frame. Roxane Gay refuses to exploit. She gives voice to the exploited, and those voices will ring clear in my head for weeks to come. I urgently hope more writers follow her lead.

Reviewed by Maya Gittelman

Roxane Gay is she of the Bad Feminist essays fame, and this time she turns her hand to feminist fiction. I am not usually a fan of short stories (I like to get INTO a story and LOVE its characters), but this satisfied me deeply on just about every level.
The common theme is, as the title suggests, "difficult women" - women who are damaged, angry, wild, provocative, powerful, confident and sometimes wrong and sometimes right. Gay moves between gritty realism and full fantasy in her stories, but they are all told in her simple, direct voice.
There are some recurring themes - twins and dead babies to name a couple - but each story is engaging and poignant in its own right. Gay also has the rare gift of being able to graphically describe sex without it being awkward or self-conscious.
There is a fair bit of misery, but there are joyful high points as well. At the exact centre of the book is a story that makes you feel like you are falling in love all over again.
I loved the whole book, but I did feel that some of her more symbolic or surreal fantasy stories were the least successful.
The writer that Gay reminds me most of is Margaret Atwood - both in her accessible realism and her fantasy storytelling.
I cannot recommend this collection of stories enough.

I loved Bad Feminist when I read it a few months ago, and when I heard that Gay’s collection of short stories was being published, I knew I had to read it.

Difficult Women is a collection of short stories, ranging from realistic fiction to magical realism and even to dystopia. Based on the title, it’s easy to realize that the short stories all feature unique and strong women. The stories all ranged and I enjoyed most of them. A few were hard to read (as they dealt with dark and sometimes distressing topics) but Gay’s distinct writing style made each short story unique and worth the read. The stories ranged in length, but ultimately they were each extraordinary.

Overall, Difficult Women was a wonderfully written short story collection with a unique voice and characters that readers will definitely be invested in!

A bunch of super depressing stories about women in super depressing situations that aren’t about them being “difficult”. I don’t even feel like this was truly a feminist work. Every woman in it has had a crap hand dealt to her, is on the receiving end of all sorts of abuse and subjugation, and only do something about it when it’s basically come down to the last straw. I would’ve liked to have seen more stories about women refusing to let themselves be put into these situations, rather than all of them being about women who let everyone else dictate their lives up until the last minute. I did rather enjoy the stories (I like depressing stuff, what can I say?), I just didn’t think it was marketed exactly right. If you are a fan of Carol Joyce Oats I would suggest picking up this anthology, but if you’re looking for optimistic, kick-ass, feminist women, I don’t think this is the book you’re looking for.

Received via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Review There is nothing difficult about Difficult Women. This anthology by Roxane Gay grabbed my attention from the get-go and ended up being one of my quickest reads this year. I enjoyed all the stories with exception of a few that felt more male-centred which threw off the dynamic. Nonetheless, these character driven stories reflect the nature of being a woman, the strength, resilience, and

If Difficult Women is your introduction to Gay I guarantee that you are in for one wild, thrilling ride. Difficult Women shows that Gay has true lyrical dexterity and a vivid, complex imagination. The stories span the gamut of thriller/mystery, general adult fiction with small elements of unexpected magical realism. With this anthology Gay shows that she transcends genre lines and she does so with nary a flaw.

The book starts with a bang, the first story emotionally wrecks you while setting you up for the rest of the book. Gay does not shy away from difficult issues and elements of this is woven into this literary work. The sequencing of the stories is perfect and the last story is absolutely beautiful. I think it ties with Immaculate by Marlon James as my favourite short short of all time.

Be sure to settle in with a box of tissues and some chocolate. You're going to need it.

I would strongly recommend this book. However, I must note that there are triggers for rape, child abuse and miscarriages.

I loved this collection. Many of these stories have been available in some form since 2009, others for a few years, and I am mortified that I hadn’t come across them before. Each story is moving, discomfiting, thought-provoking, and painfully comforting. I wept after several stories. I recognized myself in several stories. I was angered and horrified and soothed during several stories. DIFFICULT WOMEN includes traditional prose, magical realism, flashback, internal subtitles, and more. An alert reader will notice repeated allusions to characters (perhaps in various evolutions) across the stories. And the themes of public and private mourning, loss, punishment, internal and external pain, self-acceptance, and finding home play peekaboo with the reader, making each story more layered as the collection is devoured.

I deeply appreciated being challenged by the characters. The female characters aren’t only “difficult women” because of how they interact with their fellow characters, although they do make life complicated and sticky and difficult within their stories. The dozens of difficult women Gay has created are difficult because they don’t allow the reader to feel comfortably satisfied with their choices. THEIR choices.

It's difficult to review a collection of stories because, of course, you will have ones you loved, ones you disliked, ones you were bored in, ones that you wish were an entire novel & ones so dark that they'll stick in your brain until you wake up from a nightmare from them (true story). These stories were raw, real and painful to read but all illustrated the lives, emotions, trials, hurts & tribulations of women. I found it difficult to read them back to back, as the material in each story emotionally weighed me down. While the writing gripped you by your heart, I'm not sure I could read much more from Roxane Gay. The last story left me with a sinking feeling & a pit in my stomach showing a reality that happens to so many women. Gah, so so so much heartache. Gay truly is a master of her craft, even if she breaks your heart while doing it.

Roxane Gay’s Difficult Women takes it name from the complex, conflicted, and often contentious characters that inhabit its pages. A quick glance at Gay’s Twitter profile (her bio reads “If you clap, I clap back) reveals an author who operates in a similar vein. Gay, who was born in the early 1970s to Haitian parents, describes herself as a “bad feminist” yet tackles issues of race, gender, and sexuality in her writing. Gay’s work builds on the tradition established by black women writers such as Toni Morrison and Alice Walker who chronicled their personal experiences of “family violence, sexual oppression and abuse, and the corrosive effects of racism and poverty.” Like her predecessors, Gay’s writing is often controversial for its portrayal of racism “played out in the most intimate relationships.”

All of the stories in Difficult Women involve intimate relationships, and an understanding of Gay’s own past helps to illuminate the behavior of her most difficult characters. In her 2017 memoir Hunger, Gay chronicles her struggle with body image after a childhood sexual assault. Sexual assault occurs in many of these stories, yet the women are not presented as victims, even as most of the men are horrific predators. The men who do offer kindness or redemption are mostly ignorant, unaware of the struggles the women in their lives face.

The women in Difficult Women do not shy away from their own sexuality; in fact, they seek out experiences (sometimes through affairs, polyamorous situations, and other nontraditional relationships) to satiate the desires they are unwilling to repress. In the final story “Strange Gods,” the narrator details how to make the “perfect date meal,” a meal not unlike one Gay details consuming in Hunger. It requires steaks “richly marbled with fat,” fat the narrator’s mother has warned her never to eat. The narrator responds with details about how much she loves to disobey her mother’s command: “I love the way it coats my throat and how it upsets my stomach, reminds me I am doing something I should not do.” More than any other line in the collection, this quote sums up the outlook of every “difficult woman” Gay introduces.

There is no easy resolution in these stories, and Gay’s characters are likely to remind us of the most frustrating characters in our own lives. The ones whose decisions defy logic and who make the same mistakes over and over. Gay has a singular talent for creating characters who seep humanity: they are scarred, self-aware yet unapologetic. These difficult women cannot be pinned down, consolidated, or easily defined. They are messy and multifaceted. They are brazen and brash. They are our mothers, our sisters, our daughters. They are us.

"Then he's flipping me on my stomach, his unkind hand planted against my skull, holding me to the bed, treating me like the whore he doesn't want me to be."

This is a dark and wonderful collection of Roxane Gay's work. It shows the breadth of her stories and her characters - each short story brings us to a different time and place to see the experience of a woman.

These stories tackle sexual violence and abuse in a way that many collections don't. She shares the fears and the darkness that comes with many of these experiences. It's a difficult read at times because there are some terrible things, but there are also great stories, and strong women, and characters acting of their own agency as examples. It's a reminder that as women we don't face these experiences alone.

This is a great variety of writing and meaningful stories.

I saw Roxane Gay on Trevor Noah's show. I was so impressed I bought her book. It is a series of short stories and I loved them all. So I bought another of her books. Looks like I will keep going until I've read them all.

Grove Press and NetGalley provided me with an electronic copy of Difficult Women. This is my honest opinion of the book.

Difficult Women is a series of small vignettes about women in differing and troubling circumstances. They are women who have been used, abused, and sometimes spit out by the system. These women have been victimized, most of the time more than once. Each has a story to tell and they are clustered together in Difficult Women.

I had trouble seeing the point to these stories. The author explains what happened, but there is no real solution in many of the vignettes. These realistic stories show the depravity of society, but I really never felt a powerful connection to any of the characters that are depicted in Difficult Women. The novel, as a whole, is too repetitive and loses the reader's focus as a result. I was not a fan of Difficult Women and would not recommend it to other readers.

First book by this author. Very impressed by the writing style, so concise , yet so descriptive as to totally draw the reader in .
The reality that Ms Gay brought into light is , at times painful and disturbing . Thank you for your honesty and not sugar coating the issues with fake "happy endings" as so many authors tend to do.
Looking forward to the other books .

I loved Gay’s BAD FEMINIST but couldn’t finish AN UNTAMED STATE, so I wasn’t sure how I would do with DIFFICULT WOMEN. But I finished easily and many of the stories stayed with me. I think the one that’s really stuck with me is “Strange Gods,” which hews close to the details Gay’s given on the gang rape that happened to her when she was a child. This is the last story in the collection, and the crime takes place in a deer blind, which seems like a key to me, unlocking some of the strange deer imagery that appears in the volume’s other stories. I’m interested to see how this comes up again in Hunger, due out later in 2017, which I know I’ll be reading.

Somehow, I never posted this review of "Difficult Women” That’s a shame, because this is a book I’ve returned to with enjoyment of the layers which continue to be peeled back as I reread these stories.

"Difficult Women”, and the difficult men and women in their lives are at the heart of these short stories that describe the violence and love in the character’s lives. Most of the stories embrace a magical realism that shimmers around sisters and lovers.

I can hardly wait for “Hunger”, coming in June.

This book was okay. It was not as engaging as I had hoped it would be. I was disappointed in the story line. There were too many characters to follow and it took forever to find out how their stories would intertwine. Honestly, I did not want to finish the book to find out what would happen. The story line was not engaging enough to keep my interest in the content. i would put the book down and come back to after long periods of time. I wonder how it was on the bet sellers list. Someone was misleading in their "review".

DIFFICULT WOMEN BY ROXANE GAY
i am in the minority giving this collection of stories only three stars. I feel as though I am being generous giving three. First of all, I received this unrequested title the night before it was archived, on the evening of January 10
, 2017. A dear friend and neighbor was tragically killed in an accident which happened when I noticed this on my shelf on January 12, 2017. Since it is a collection of short stories I wanted to read them thoroughly.

I didn't feel any warmth in this entire collection. Maybe I would have liked them if I wasn't devastated by the death of a dear friend and neighbor and feeling rushed because I received them the night before they archived.

I know these stories have received awards for Best short story, Best Mystery Short Story and a long list of publications. Honestly, I didn't think any of them could be described as Beautiful or dazzling. My experience while reading these were feelings such as dark, bleak, despair, cold, misogynistic.
Two sister's aged ten and eleven years old are abducted and brutally raped and held captive for an undetermined amount of time by a pedophile are scarred into their adulthood. One sister marries and the other sister is forced to move to Reno, Nevada in a dilapidated motel. The description of the run down motel is a leaky water stained black with rot and mush ceiling and walls. The sister's are never going to recover.

A stripper who is trying to pay her college tuition is stalked and brutally raped by one of her regular clients that she is repulsed by. The man who followed her home pushes his way into her apartment and it is graphic and violent. When the man that she is seeing comes back from going to pick up food forces the rapist to flee. The rapist left her ten crisp one-hundred dollar bills on her coffee table. The woman refuses to report the violent attack to the police because she sums it up as an "Occupational Hazard".

I read this 300 page collection slowly and didn't see any hope or beauty. I do understand and sympathize with the author knowing she was a victim of sexual assault which is heartbreaking and the old saying goes write what you know. I can see the author is a strong writer and talented and many other reviews give all four and five star ratings. For me there has to be some redeeming qualities to some of the collection. I found these stories to be very depressing and I honestly can not say that I could recommend this book.

Thank you to Net Galley, Roxane Gay and Grove Press for sending me this digital copy for a fair and honest review.

I bought this book looking for extemp pieces. There are not many books that I take the time to write a review for, but this one was such a disappointment that I felt like others needed to know. The 21 stories are all (slight) variations on the same character. The title, book jacket description and selected praise would lead a buyer to think that these might be stories about strong women. This is not the case at all; these are damaged, hopeless, deranged, unsympathetic characters at best. To make it worse for the reader there is not a story arch or plot to be found. The stories and characters from the old True Confessions magazine showed more developement. It will go to recycling rather than resale.

As with most short story collections, I liked some of the stories and the other ones are just so-so. As I made it past the halfway mark in the book, some of the characters and plot situations began to sound familiar and similar to previous stories. I think the story I liked the most was the one that took place in the gated community in Florida.

These stories are intense and inventive, and they pack a hell of a punch. I found myself looking for the next word the way a smoker looks for their cigarettes, utterly engaged. Maybe it's because Gay gets to bring to live so many different characters in so many different worlds in a short story collection like this, but this is my favorite of her works so far. Gripping, masterfully crafted, and majestic.

Format: eBook
Rating: 4.5 / 5 stars
Content warning: Strong (sexual assault, violence, swearing, abuse)

A captivating collection of short stories about women and their complex relationships with men, sex, power, grief, and hardship. Would recommend for adult readers looking for a grim, real take on what it means to be a woman in America.

This is the first book of Gay's I've read. I've seen interviews with her and follow her on Twitter; I was excited to see if her writing was as engaging as her voice.

I was disappointed by the book. In fact, I didn't finish it. Gay is above mediocre male authors as far as technical skill goes... but this was okay at best. The stories seemed aggressively hopeless. Is that the point? A celebration of women who are defiant to the detriment of their own happiness? Maybe. But it didn't strike a chord with me... it felt more like punishment. I've been a survivor of violence and trauma. I've been a difficult woman... I wondered that I might not be the intended audience.

I'll read more Gay (I think she might shine in nonfiction) but this book was dull.

I know that plenty of people rate this book by whether they "like" the stories or not. I don't think that's the point - many of these stories are very disturbing. Several stayed with me, but they are disturbing. The stories are of women making difficult choices in troubling circumstances, and doing the best they can. Even when the stories detailed events I have never been through personally, I found myself able to sympathize if not empathize with the characters. The writing makes very clear, without any sentiment, what is at stake and the way in which these particular characters act and react. It's a brilliant collection.

These short stories left me little to contemplate after I finished reading them. I'm surprised they were previously published in some "Best Of" anthologies. Although quickly read, I can't recommend investing the time. I had just finished reading a short story collection by William Gay which were very thought provoking so this book was a bit of a let down.

This book left me wanting to know and read more of the characters in many of the short stories! There are a couple that are symbolic, that I had a hard time wrapping my mind around...but overall they are very relatable, complex characters and stories that you are dying to know more about.

The first half engaged me, although I thought some of the twists were forced. One story in particular had me in tears. However, toward the second half of the stories I felt as if I were an audience to a bad improv act. I skimmed and then gave up.

Difficult Women by Roxane Gay was stellar because...well it was written by Roxane Gay! This collection of short stories features female main characters who don't fit into boxes. After reading this, you'll see how scripted most novels featuring women are.

This collection of short stories is quite well written. It is at times raw and painful but also liberating and empowering. It resonated with me on a deeper level, the kind of thing that gets under your skin and stays with you.

Gay had a way with words that really helps you step into someone else's life and reality. Each story was beautifully and poignantly written and truth be told, I was sad to see it end. Some of the stories, while graphic, gave true insight to the meaning behind the title, Difficult Women.

Like most everything I have read by Gay, these stories are vivid, and the book is impossible to put down. The violence of many of the stories makes them “difficult” but I think the reward is that I felt I had to wrestle with my own ideas of violence, victimhood, and the societal expectations placed on women.

The first story in the book drew me in. And then it all went downhill- women who define themselves based solely upon their ability to sexually attract a man. Feels like a time warp to the 1950s. The technical writing is sometimes quite good but one mind numbing chapter after another results in the quality being irrelevant

A book club book in which I had no idea of what to expect. This book made me wish that books came with ratings such as those for movies. While this book seems to be receiving great reviews I'd have to question the audience. Some people love graphic, vulgar, shocking for shocking's sake and can put up with truck driver language. I on the other hand tend to abhor such books finding them lacking in artistic style, creativity and beauty, hence my 1 star, (if only I could give 'zero' stars I would). I found her writing repetitive and self-indulgent as though every 'woman' she wrote about was all about herself.
For reference my favorite books are The Kitchen House, The Shadow Of The Wind, The Book Thief and Elenor & Park.

This is a collection of rather strange stories - - actually more snippets of life than stories. The writing is good and the author has a theme going to make all of the selections tie in together. The subject matter is dark and pretty depressing, but thought-provoking.

I didn't hate the stories - but didn't love them either. It was just an okay read for me.

Just amazing.. unstoppable.. whether its the parish priest sleeping with a whore or the woman who falls in love with the twin brother impersonating her busband, or the circle of water following the protagon ist.. he writing and storytelling is simply marvellous.

I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone. Feel like I wasted my money. Couldn't finish it. What I did read of it left me feeling sick to my stomach. Different stories about different women in sad situations, some of their own making.

This book is extremely misleading. I thought I was buying something feminist but instead got something solely about violence. It is poorly written and the themes of sexual assault are hard to get through. I couldn't finish the book.

I loved Bad Feminist when I read it a few months ago, and when I heard that Gay’s collection of short stories was being published, I knew I had to read it.

Difficult Women is a collection of short stories, ranging from realistic fiction to magical realism and even to dystopia. Based on the title, it’s easy to realize that the short stories all feature unique and strong women. The stories all ranged and I enjoyed most of them. A few were hard to read (as they dealt with dark and sometimes distressing topics) but Gay’s distinct writing style made each short story unique and worth the read. The stories ranged in length, but ultimately they were each extraordinary.

Overall, Difficult Women was a wonderfully written short story collection with a unique voice and characters that readers will definitely be invested in!

The first half engaged me, although I thought some of the twists were forced. One story in particular had me in tears. However, toward the second half of the stories I felt as if I were an audience to a bad improv act. I skimmed and then gave up.

Like most everything I have read by Gay, these stories are vivid, and the book is impossible to put down. The violence of many of the stories makes them “difficult” but I think the reward is that I felt I had to wrestle with my own ideas of violence, victimhood, and the societal expectations placed on women.