Why I Don't Write

Praise

“A winning blend of emotional intensity, capricious playfulness and keen-eyed observation.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

“A winning blend of emotional intensity, capricious playfulness and keen-eyed observation.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune “Tender, precise, emotional, insightful and funny.” —Julianne Moore

“Why I Don’t Write: And Other Stories, [Minot’s] first in some thirty years, showcases her versatility. Its ten stories range from mainstream to experimental, with sundry stops in between. . . . She has an unmistakable knack for distilling things, and gorgeously, at that. . . . Taken as a whole, Minot’s collection is, by turns, spiky and intimate, adventurous, stark and lyrical. . . . Few story collections shine as brightly.” —Portland Press Herald (Maine)

“Why I Don’t Write is a quiet collection, but it is not a halting or timid one. Minot still has a poet’s instinct for the surprising volta, the striking image, the bracing final line. After thirty years away from the short story, it is good to have her back, clear-eyed and fearless as ever, whispering difficult truths and ambiguities that a less assured writer would feel compelled to shout.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Susan Minot is an author well reputed for the purity and terseness of her prose exhibited over a career of more than three decades. Her latest book, a collection of ten stories is no exception. . . . Minot excels in description of people and places. . . . [A] rewarding read.” —New York Journal of Books

“[Why I Don’t Write] is strikingly visual. Here, the light is often white, people’s heads are bullet-shaped, and the littered car of a scoundrel professor is a fish tank. At their best, the sentences are frozen frames peering at the reader, as the reader peers back, peeling new information with each read. . . . [These stories] spill with luscious sentences that scintillate.” —Chicago Review of Books

“[Minot’s] gift is for illuminating revelatory moments in characters’ lives. . . . Throughout, Minot is keenly aware of how men hurt women—as well as how women sabotage themselves.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Minot . . . finds hints of violence, grief, and trauma in her characters’ interior lives in this precise, shimmering collection.” —Publishers Weekly