Show Don't Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld

Published 27 Feb 2025.
Razor-sharp, glittering collection of stories exploring marriage and female friendship, from the Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author of Romantic Comedy and American Wife. 'No-one else writes with such precision and amusement' RED MAGAZINEIn ‘Lost But Not Forgotten,’ Sittenfeld gives readers of her novel Prep a chance to see how our beloved character Lee Fiora is doing twenty years later, when she returns for an awkward school reunion. In ‘Pretzels are for Biting,’ a woman looks up two best friends that she moved away from after her divorce.

In ‘Creative Differences,’ a photographer from the mid-west quickly realizes that the ‘documentary’ she stars in is actually a commercial for a multi-national corporation. And in ‘Atomic Marriage,’ a Hollywood producer falls for a bestselling Christian self-help author while working on their film adaptation. In these twelve dazzling stories, Sittenfeld skewers our assumptions about fame, marriage and celebrity.

Laying bare on the page what we're all thinking but hesitate to say, she explores women's lives at the intersection of sex, love, ambition and the entangled pursuit of a fulfilling life.