Single, Carefree, Mellow: Stories
(OverDrive MP3 Audiobook, OverDrive Listen)
“Katherine Heiny's work does something magical: elevates the mundane so that it has the stakes of a mystery novel, gives women's interior lives the gravity they so richly deserve — and makes you laugh along the way.”
—Lena Dunham
Single, Carefree, Mellow is that rare and wonderful thing: a debut that is superbly accomplished, endlessly entertaining, and laugh-out-loud funny.
Maya is in love with both her boyfriend and her boss. Sadie’s lover calls her as he drives to meet his wife at marriage counseling. Gwen pines for her roommate, a man who will hold her hand but then tells her that her palm is sweaty. And Sasha agrees to have a drink with her married lover’s wife and then immediately regrets it. These are the women of Single, Carefree, Mellow, and in these eleven sublime stories they are grappling with unwelcome houseguests, disastrous birthday parties, needy but loyal friends, and all manner of love, secrets, and betrayal.
In “Cranberry Relish” Josie’s ex—a man she met on Facebook—has a new girlfriend he found on Twitter. In “Blue Heron Bridge” Nina is more worried that the Presbyterian minister living in her garage will hear her kids swearing than about his finding out that she’s sleeping with her running partner. And in “The Rhett Butlers” a teenager loses her virginity to her history teacher and then outgrows him.
In snappy, glittering prose that is both utterly hilarious and achingly poignant, Katherine Heiny chronicles the ways in which we are unfaithful to each other, both willfully and unwittingly. Maya, who appears in the title story and again in various states of love, forms the spine of this linked collection, and shows us through her moments of pleasure, loss, deceit, and kindness just how fickle the human heart can be.
Read by a Full Cast:
THE DIVE BAR, read by Julia Whelan
HOW TO GIVE THE WRONG IMPRESSION, read by Emily Rankin
SINGLE, CAREFREE, MELLOW, read by Rebecca Lowman
BLUE HERON BRIDGE, read by Cassandra Campbell
THAT DANCE YOU DO, read by Julia Whelan
DARK MATTER, read by Rebecca Lowman
CRANBERRY RELISH, read by Cassandra Campbell
THOUGHTS OF A BRIDESMAID, read by Julia Whelan
THE RHETT BUTLERS, read by Emily Rankin
GRENDEL’S MOTHER, read by Rebecca Lowman
ANDORRA, read by Cassandra Campbell
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Katherine Heiny. (2015). Single, Carefree, Mellow: Stories. Unabridged Books on Tape.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Katherine Heiny. 2015. Single, Carefree, Mellow: Stories. Books on Tape.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Katherine Heiny, Single, Carefree, Mellow: Stories. Books on Tape, 2015.
MLA Citation (style guide)Katherine Heiny. Single, Carefree, Mellow: Stories. Unabridged Books on Tape, 2015.
Library | Owned | Available |
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Shared Digital Collection | 1 | 1 |
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“Katherine Heiny's work does something magical: elevates the mundane so that it has the stakes of a mystery novel, gives women's interior lives the gravity they so richly deserve — and makes you laugh along the way.”
—Lena Dunham
Single, Carefree, Mellow is that rare and wonderful thing: a debut that is superbly accomplished, endlessly entertaining, and laugh-out-loud funny.
Maya is in love with both her boyfriend and her boss. Sadie’s lover calls her as he drives to meet his wife at marriage counseling. Gwen pines for her roommate, a man who will hold her hand but then tells her that her palm is sweaty. And Sasha agrees to have a drink with her married lover’s wife and then immediately regrets it. These are the women of Single, Carefree, Mellow, and in these eleven sublime stories they are grappling with unwelcome houseguests, disastrous birthday parties, needy but loyal friends, and all manner of love, secrets, and betrayal.
In “Cranberry Relish” Josie’s ex—a man she met on Facebook—has a new girlfriend he found on Twitter. In “Blue Heron Bridge” Nina is more worried that the Presbyterian minister living in her garage will hear her kids swearing than about his finding out that she’s sleeping with her running partner. And in “The Rhett Butlers” a teenager loses her virginity to her history teacher and then outgrows him.
In snappy, glittering prose that is both utterly hilarious and achingly poignant, Katherine Heiny chronicles the ways in which we are unfaithful to each other, both willfully and unwittingly. Maya, who appears in the title story and again in various states of love, forms the spine of this linked collection, and shows us through her moments of pleasure, loss, deceit, and kindness just how fickle the human heart can be.
Read by a Full Cast:
THE DIVE BAR, read by Julia Whelan
HOW TO GIVE THE WRONG IMPRESSION, read by Emily Rankin
SINGLE, CAREFREE, MELLOW, read by Rebecca Lowman
BLUE HERON BRIDGE, read by Cassandra Campbell
THAT DANCE YOU DO, read by Julia Whelan
DARK MATTER, read by Rebecca Lowman
CRANBERRY RELISH, read by Cassandra Campbell
THOUGHTS OF A BRIDESMAID, read by Julia Whelan
THE RHETT BUTLERS, read by Emily Rankin
GRENDEL’S MOTHER, read by Rebecca Lowman
ANDORRA, read by Cassandra Campbell- reviews
- premium: False
- source: Most Anticipated Books of 2015, Entertainment Weekly
- content: "Katherine Heiny's work does something magical: elevates the mundane so that it has the stakes of a mystery novel, gives women's interior lives the gravity they so richly deserve -- and makes you laugh along the way."
--Lena Dunham
"This whip-smart collection about women wrapped up in all kinds of love affairs will have you laughing out loud."
- premium: False
- source: Kirkus (starred)
- content: "Heiny explores sex, relationships and the internal lives of young women in this charmingly candid collection of short stories. The women who populate the pages of Heiny's disarming debut are girlfriends, mistresses and wives. They are best friends, roommates and lovers. They are intelligent but not always ambitious--keenly insightful but sometimes, perhaps willfully, blind to their own deeper desires--with loyalties and libidos that may be at odds and morals that may be in question. Despite the title, not all are single (or carefree or mellow), but they are all singular, and following their stories is like sitting at a dive bar tossing back deceptively pretty, surprisingly strong drinks with a pal who may not always make the best decisions but always comes away with the most colorful tales... These young women are sympathetic and slyly seductive, sometimes selfish and maddeningly un-self-aware, but they are beguilingly human, and readers will yield to their charms."
- premium: False
- source: Adelle Waldman, author of The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P
- content: "Katherine Heiny's smart and stylishly-written stories are a delight. The women who populate this book--from a teenager in a relationship with her history teacher, in the terrific story 'The Rhett Butlers,' to a graduate student with a crush on her roommate, to several unfaithful suburban wives--are wonderfully human and relatable, both hapless and full of heart."
- premium: False
- source: Susan Rieger, author of The Divorce Papers
- content: "Not since Laurie Colwin has a writer so poignantly and wittily depicted the joys of infidelity. Katherine Heiny knows the secret: happy marriages make for happy affairs. Also happy readers."
- premium: False
- source: Lisa Block, Library Journal (starred)
- content: "Funny and heartfelt . . . Few characters are single and even fewer are carefree--though most long to be. Instead, they are remorseful about their disloyalties, torn between spouses and secret lovers, and guilt-ridden over the betrayals they commit in the name of love . . . Maya, who appears in several more stories in various stages of life and love, is one of many captivating characters expertly imagined by Heiny . . . An exceptionally humorous collection by a talented new writer."
- premium: False
- source: Jennifer Close, author of Girls in White Dresses and The Smart One
- content: "Single, Carefree, Mellow is a book about heartache, adultery, love, and loss that somehow manages to be both laugh-out-loud funny and wise, sometimes in the very same sentence. It's full of lines so smart and sharp that I was compelled to stop and read them out loud to my friends. This book is amazing, brilliant, and nothing short of wonderful."
- premium: False
- source: Stephen McCauley, author of The Object of My Affection and Insignificant Others
- content:
"Katherine Heiny where have you been all my life? Single, Carefree, Mellow is among the most insightful, funny, and smart collections I've read in a very long time. The unfaithful lovers and spouses that populate so many of these stories remain lovable and true despite their bad behavior and questionable choices. And their happy endings feel earned and unsentimental. How did you pull that off? There are echoes of Lorrie Moore, Melissa Bank, and even Alice Munro, but the voice is fresh and original throughout. More, more, more. Please!"
- premium: False
- source: Elle UK
- content:
"Formed of ten exquisitely-composed stories (all featuring women in various states of love), Heiny's book takes a disarming and wry look at the inherent nature of betrayal and secrets within relationships."
- premium: False
- source: Ten Big Breakout Authors
- content:
"Lots of short story collections have been coming my way lately, and early 2015 seems especially rich in that regard. This debut collection, which bowled me over on first read, deserves a special shout out."
- premium: True
- source:
- content: This series of short stories, generally centering around shallow, unkind, and unlikable women cheating on their respective spouses or boyfriends, is an effort aiming for profound that ends up profoundly missing its mark. All four narrators adopt some level of condescension in their voices as they minimally distinguish each character. Each tries to inject some whisper of depth into the characters, but they're so one-dimensional that listeners fail to care about them. A.C.P. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine
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September 15, 2014
Dissatisfied teenagers and bored housewives, clueless boyfriends and cuckolded husbands, and 11 variations on the recurrent theme of infidelity and its fallout populate Heiny’s first collection of stories. “The Dive Bar” shows a woman cajoled into having drinks with her lover’s more sophisticated wife; unsurprisingly, the tête–à–tête ends doesn’t end well. “Blue Heron Bridge” finds a physique-obsessed mother consumed by an affair with an aging personal trainer. In the second-person “The Rhett Butlers,” a teenager embarks on a tour of seedy hotel rooms and blah sex with her smarmy high school history teacher. A man leaves a dalliance with a woman he met on Facebook for a gal whose tweets he admires in “Cranberry Relish.” Three of the offerings—“Dark Matter,” “Grendel’s Mother,” and the title story—follow the romantic entanglements and discontented musings of one character through marriage to her long-time boyfriend and pregnancy. But it’s hard to care about her fate when her snarky asides about life’s superficialities and near-constant critique of herself (and her relationship) continue unabated, despite her changed circumstances. First printing: 50,000 copies.
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“Katherine Heiny's work does something magical: elevates the mundane so that it has the stakes of a mystery novel, gives women's interior lives the gravity they so richly deserve — and makes you laugh along the way.”
—Lena Dunham
Single, Carefree, Mellow is that rare and wonderful thing: a debut that is superbly accomplished, endlessly entertaining, and laugh-out-loud funny.
Maya is in love with both her boyfriend and her boss. Sadie’s lover calls her as he drives to meet his wife at marriage counseling. Gwen pines for her roommate, a man who will hold her hand but then tells her that her palm is sweaty. And Sasha agrees to have a drink with her married lover’s wife and then immediately regrets it. These are the women of Single, Carefree, Mellow, and in these eleven sublime stories they are grappling with unwelcome houseguests, disastrous birthday parties, needy but loyal friends,...- sortTitle
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