Difficult Women

Roxane Gay has a very dark imagination. She says so in an interview at the end of this collection of short stories, but this is not a surprise at all once you've read it (or anything else she's written). I love her writing, but I didn't love this collection. It's violence, sex, loneliness, rape, brokenness, loss, shame; so many of the stories involve some kind of extramarital affair, even the stories that were interesting enough before the affair was introduced (Requiem for a Glass Heart, We Are All So Happy Now). These women, collectively, are not so much difficult as enduring, but reading about their endurance is difficult and bleak and often hopeless. There's not much to celebrate these women, which is not to say that these stories are unimportant, and this felt like a good time for me to have read it. I'd probably give it a 2.5.