Games and Rituals Exclusive Bookplate Edition
Format:Hardback
Publisher:HarperCollins Publishers
Published:18th Apr '23
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This collection features eleven charming stories exploring love and relationships, showcasing characters in humorous and poignant situations. Katherine Heiny's writing shines with warmth, capturing the complexities of everyday life.
"Games and Rituals" is a collection of eleven captivating stories by Katherine Heiny, celebrated author of "Early Morning Riser." This edition, featuring a signed bookplate and a special badge, showcases a range of experiences centered around love in its many forms. The narratives explore the complexities of relationships, from humorous encounters at an airport bar to the intricacies of ex-husbands with unexpected benefits and the challenges faced by mothers of seemingly perfect teenagers.
Heiny's characters are vividly drawn, engaging in a variety of games and rituals that oscillate between playful and poignant. In the story "Bridesmaid, Revisited," Marilee grapples with life's pressures while donning an oversized bridesmaid dress at work, illustrating her struggle with both laundry and life crises. Meanwhile, "Twist and Shout" features an elderly father who confuses his expensive hearing aid for a snack, adding a touch of absurdity to the everyday. Each tale is infused with Heiny's signature humor, revealing the quirks and vulnerabilities of her characters.
Through these narratives, Heiny captures the essence of waking up in the wrong bed, wearing mismatched shoes, and facing the chaos of life, all while being surrounded by the right people. "Games and Rituals" is a testament to her ability to blend humor with deep empathy, offering readers a delightful and heartwarming exploration of love, friendship, and the human experience.
Praise for Games and Rituals
‘Heiny has the comic writer’s knack of taking a character’s idiosyncrasies (…) and making them joyfully relatable. (And she can say more in a pithy parenthesis than many writers manage in a page.) She has a genius for spinning universality out of the absurdly specific’
THE GUARDIAN
‘Superb… as near perfection as, say, Donald Trump is far from it… Heiny is habitually congratulated for writing feelgood stories, but if these pointed, satirical, emotionally ruthless takes on humanity merely made me feel good, I wouldn’t value them half as much.’
THE TIMES
‘For any reader yet to encounter Katherine Heiny, this sparky new story collection provides a joyous introduction…The deadpan delivery, the bittersweet wisdom, the sublime farce – it’s all here.’
THE OBSERVER
Anyone who has read any of Heiny’s previous work will know she has a knack for capturing all the vicissitudes of love in a way that few other writers can. Games and Rituals is no different, bringing the minutiae of our everyday interactions to life with humour and clarity.’
iNEWS
Short stories sometimes leave you wanting more but each one in this collection is as satisfying as any novel… All human life is here and Heiny exposes its complexity with wit and poignancy’
GOOD HOUSEKEEPING
‘I’m a devoted fan of Katherine Heiny. I can’t think of another writer who manages to gets so under the skin of her characters…These might be short stories but each one contains multitudes.’
RED MAGAZINE
‘Games and Rituals, full of relatably weird characters discovering their self-deceptions, proves her to be the most pleasurable architect of the short story form writing today…Her radar for people’s eccentricities is exquisite’
INDEPENDENT
‘Witty, astute and delightfully accessible’
SUNDAY TIMES
ISBN: 9780008395148-EB
Dimensions: 222mm x 141mm x 24mm
Weight: 350g
240 pages