This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things

by Naomi Wood

Overview

For fans of American Housewife and the work of Lily King, a provocative, razor-sharp, and riotously entertaining story collection exploring the dark side of family and femininity.

CONTAINS “COMORBIDITIES,” WINNER OF THE BBC SHORT STORY PRIZE

In my life, I had always been a good woman; controlling what it was that I wanted. But recently, I had started to notice my bad energy, and I began to follow it, wondering where it would take me . . .

A woman has an unexpected outburst at a corporate therapy session for working mothers. A couple find some long-overdue time to rekindle their relationship and make an ill-advised home movie. A pregnant film director plots revenge on the actress who betrayed her. An ex-wife deliberately causes conflict at her ex-husband’s wedding.

This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things illuminates the lives of malicious, subversive, and untamed women. Exploring failed sisterhood, dubious parenting, and the dark side of modern love, this powerful and funny collection exposes how society wants women to behave, and shows what happens when they refuse.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780063399723
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	11/26/2024
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Naomi Wood is the award-winning author of three novels, including the bestselling Mrs. Hemingway. Her stories have been published in the Mid-American Review, Washington Square Review, Joyland, and Stylist, and have been shortlisted for the Manchester Fiction Prize, the London Magazine Short Story Prize, and longlisted for the Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize. “Comorbidities” won the 2023 BBC National Short Story Award. She lives in Norwich with her family and teaches Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia.

Editorial Reviews

08/12/2024

The characters in this nuanced if slight collection from Wood (The Godless Boys) are loosely connected by themes of motherhood and the tensions brought about by having children. The narrator of “A/A/A/A,” separated from her husband, agrees to accompany her friend Marissa to Paris for the day, without telling her husband what she’s up to. Her secrecy leads her to ruminate about the limits of a parent’s obligations, prompting Marissa to respond, “We all want to leave. No one wants to stay. But they’re the grand love affair in the end. The kids.” In “Lesley, in Therapy,” the title character cuts her maternity leave short while dealing with postpartum depression. Her nanny, an older Jamaican woman, tells Lesley she’s “better off at work than wanting to dash the baby’s brains out on the kitchen counter.” In “Flatten the Curve,” set during the Covid-19 pandemic, Deborah navigates lockdown with her family and develops a crush on her neighbor, the father of her daughter’s best friend. Hints of consequential drama suffuse most of the stories, and the characters are deliciously complex, but too often the entries end abruptly. Ultimately, this one’s a bit underwhelming. Agent: Sarah Fuentes, United Talent Agency. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

"A smart, skewering collection of tales on the subversive sides of womanhood. Failed sisterhood, the shadowy side of modern love, perilous parenting classes and the dangers of inviting an ex-wife to a former husband’s wedding are explored with gleeful aplomb." — Daily Mail (London)

“It’s a bracing pleasure to spend time with the fierce women in Naomi Wood’s This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things. These stories are hilarious and unapologetic, reckoning with ambition, sex, and climate change. I loved this book.” — Amanda Eyre Ward, New York Times bestselling author of Loves & Liars

“I love this collection! Every story is glorious—full of dark mischief, so funny and unexpected and original.” — Emma Healey, author of Elizabeth Is Missing

“Humane and very funny…[on] our emotional and intellectual storms, and the generosity we are capable of that will keep us all afloat.”
— Jessie Burton, author of The Miniaturist

"Complex, powerful, relatable, hilarious, expansive, REAL tales of modern motherhood. This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things captures the horror and terror of motherhood as well as the joys and tenderness. This book is another little chip off The Shame of not finding motherhood easy or pleasurable all the time – but mostly it is so, so funny. It’s a life-affirming companion for any woman who has ever doubted or questioned or winced at her own life choices or deepest feelings. I loved it." — Emma Jane Unsworth, author of Animals

"Wickedly entertaining....Wood brings a thrilling focus to mothers rekindling sex lives, punishing former lovers, and navigating corporate dynamics while rejecting the confines of the society-sanctioned roles they are expected to play." — Shelf Awareness

"Wood's perceptive, funny writing and her characters, concerned about loving both their jobs and their children too much even as they worry their kids won't have a world to live in, make for a winning addition to recent, taboo-embracing motherhood fiction like Rachel Yoder's Nightbitch and Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy." — Booklist

“A whip smart, funny, and pitch-perfect collection of stories about flawed and complex women we actually recognize. This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things is literary fiction at its best, and Naomi Wood a writer at the top of her game.”
— Christie Watson, author of The Language of Kindness and Moral Injuries

“How terrifically exciting to see Naomi Wood flourish in the short story form. It seems the perfect vehicle for her wit, intelligence, mischief and levity. These stories absolutely nail the experiences of women rebelling in worlds calibrated to restrict and undernourish them. They skewer modern parenting, maternity, romance, and morality. It’s a beautiful, electrifying thing to witness—a writer so hilariously and so reasonably voicing the unspeakable.”
— Sarah Hall, author of The Beautiful Indifference

From the Publisher