Daddy by Emma Cline: short story collection review
Thoughts: I want to start this off with the preface that I'm not a huge Emma Cline fan in general. I really didn't like The Girls, and I liked The Guest enough. But there's a certain charm to her writing that intrigues me, nonetheless. So, since I wanted to read more short stories this year, I picked up Cline's anthology with collected stories from esteemed literary magazines like the Paris Review, Granata, and the New Yorker. And there are many great stories here. I'm impressed with the quality of the writing and the craft evident across the collection. Writing a short story is hard. It's an incredibly difficult form to get right. And Cline does it in story after story in this anthology covering a range of topics and places–mostly different looks at various people's unique and privileged lives, a peak behind the curtain. Some of these stories are directly embedded in these worlds, while other stories brush with it from an outsider's perspective, much like The Guest. In a departure from The Guest's Hamptons setting, though, the majority of these stories are set in Los Angeles. One of the more interesting ones follows an American Apparel girl in the heyday of the brand. It'd be a great companion read with the memoir Strip Tees by Kate Flannery. While the last 2 stories had me skimming, it's rare that I make it that far into an anthology so fully engaged. Usually, there are a couple stories that shine in a difficult abyss, but this anthology holds up to a surprising degree where I'd recommend the majority of the stories. If you're interested in diving further into Cline's work and seeing it from a different perspective than her novels, or if you like short stories and are looking for more, this is worth picking up. Overall: 4
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