She Was Like That

A New York Times Notable Book of 2019 selection, a New York Times Editors’ Choice book, and longlisted for the Story Prize—from the bestselling, highly acclaimed National Book Award nominee, She Was Like That is a “piercing, intimate, and exquisite” (Publishers Weekly) collection of new and selected stories that capture “the joys and anxieties of motherhood” (Star Tribune, Minneapolis).

In these twelve deft, acutely funny, and often heartbreaking stories, “Walbert captures with an unusual combination of restraint and rhapsody” (The New York Times) the questions women ask themselves and the definitions assigned to them as wives, mothers, and daughters. Her characters are searchers, uneasy in one way or another. They yearn for connection.

In the riveting opening story “M&M World,” a woman is plunged into panic when she briefly loses one of her daughters at the vast and over-stimulating Times Square store. In “Slow the Heart,” a single mother tries to ease tension at the dinner table with Roses and Thorns, the game she knows the Obamas played in the White House. In “Radical Feminists,” a woman skating with her two children encounters the man who derailed her career years earlier. And in the poignant, “A Mother Is Someone Who Tells Jokes,” a mother reflects on the nursery school project that preceded her son’s autism diagnosis. This is a deeply moving, resonant collection from a writer “rightly celebrated for her ability to capture the variety and vulnerability of women’s lives with a combination of lyricism and brawn” (NPR).

Kate Walbert is the author of seven works of fiction, including the critically acclaimed story collection, She Was Like That; A Short History of Women (a New York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of the Year); Our Kind (finalist for the National Book Award); and The Gardens of Kyoto. Her plays include Genius, First, and A Short History, an adaptation of her novel with music. She lives with her family in New York City.