An enjoyable read, well written and entertaining. Hadn't read this author before but would consider reading again.

An eclectic mix of short stories, engaging and thought-provoking in equal measure.

Each story explores an aspect of the human condition and challenges our way of seeing.

Several stories have a dark undercurrent but most have a positive outcome.

There is an art to writing short stories, the author having to concentrate their focus into a condensed narrative but still manage to provide a coherent and believable storyline.

The best of Lily King's stories demonstrate an almost forensic attention to detail and observation of the emotional journeys taken by the various protagonists.

My personal favourites are Five Tuesdays in Winter, When in the Dordogne and North Sea. The first was a poignant and sweet exploration of love finding its voice, the second a beautifully observed coming of age story and the third a travelogue where a grieving mother tries to reconnect with her adolescent daughter.

On the basis of reading these stories, I would be very happy to read more and longer books by Lily King.

I received a free digital ARC of this book via Pan Macmillan, and am leaving this review voluntarily.

I always expect short stories to leave behind more of a mark than a full length novel. Perhaps because they are sheared clean of all excess, their message is bare-knuckled rather than gloved. With that in mind, Five Tuesdays in Winter is an exceptional example of the genre since I was left thinking about almost every single chapter. Considering love, loss and the transience of life, Lily King wanders through a whole spectrum of human emotion leaving the reader spellbound in her wake.

A teenaged girl employed as a babysitter for a summer imagines herself in Jane Eyre only to have a cruel awakening. A bookseller falls quietly in love with an employee. A fourteen year-old boy finds himself unexpectedly nurtured by two friendly college students. A proud nonagenarian rails at his granddaughter's hospital bed. And a gay man tries unsuccessfully to reconnect with an old college friend. Several reviews have made contrasts between Five Tuesdays and King's longer fiction but this was my first experience of her work. The early stories lulled me into a false sense of security, that this might be a collection about comings of age, of reaching a new maturity of contentment. But as the anthology progressed, things became more unpredictable and 'The Man at the Door' contained a final surprise.

Of all the book, 'When in the Dordogne' was my favourite, the tale of the boy being babysat by two strangers from the local college. Told in retrospect from middle age, the narrator recognises things that he did not see at the time. He sees both his own social and financial privilege and that one of his kindly mentors was in fact in love with the other. He has been neglected by his distracted parents and ignored by his much older siblings but here he finally finds people who truly care about him. The college students actually take notice of him and even nudge him towards the girl upon whom he has a crush. As the summer draws to its conclusion, there is a real sweetness to the narrator's final revelations of what was lost but what remained.

My initial impression was that Five Tuesdays was a meditation on longing. Certainly these are recurring themes across 'Creature', the titular 'Five Tuesdays in Winter', 'When in the Dordogne' and even 'Hotel Seattle'. But then other stories such as 'North Sea' and 'Waiting for Charlie' failed to quite fit the theme. Of course, most of the stories have already appeared in magazines so it is possible that King was simply gathering together her material for group release. But I think perhaps she was focused instead on intimacy in all its forms. Each of the characters seems to consider someone to whom they are close from the outside and each reaches fresh understanding, both for good and for ill.

There is a tenderness to King's writing that makes me want to seek out her work once more. Each of her characters emerge fully-realised even in these fleeting encounters. And I particularly enjoy how 'The Man at the Door' is a knowing wink from writer to reader, cheerfully dismissing our opinion. Feeling honest and real, King has a keen eye for human nature at both its most beautiful and its most unsettling. This is a book that left goosebumps.

Loved this short story collection!
My favourites were Creature & Hotel Seattle.
Fabulous characters.

Shall be on the look out to read more King!

I greatly enjoyed this book as I have also read one of the authors other books. We used this for a book club as others had read her other novel Writers and Lovers and enjoyed that.

This was great. Will definitely read more of Lily King in the future. None of these stories were stand-outs to me, in the sense that I would teach them on a class syllabus, but they were all solid work. Lily King could definitely become someone akin to Elizabeth Strout or Anne Tyler, a decidedly literary writer with mainstream appeal. Her writing is very warm and human. Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.

What a great collection of short stories! I loved how they were all so different but everyone poignant and touching. The characters seemed to come to life, despite the stories being short and I found myself wanting to know more with quite a few of them.

In the titular story, a socially awkward bookseller falls in love with his employee as she visits his house every Tuesday to give his daughter Spanish lessons, grappling with the astonishing way that passion can grip you by the throat. In another, a young boy spends a summer being babysat by two working class teenage boys as his father recovers from his suicide attempt in Europe, and discovers the warmth and safety of care and platonic love. In another, a bored housewife shares a moment of passion over bridge with her friend’s absent father and descends into obsession. ⁣
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These stories have the gift of taking the mundane and seeing the profound, of finding immense beauty in the small interactions and words that make up our days. They celebrate the humanness of the everyday. ⁣
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#LilyKing #FiveTuesdaysinWinter

There's some great short story collections out there at the moment and this one is up there with one of the best i have read . What I loved is that the stories aren't weird or trying to be anything overly original , they simply focus on everyday scenarios all with a theme of relationships. Friends, families and strangers all come together in a New England setting and the reader becomes absorbed in a sort of warm comforting atmosphere . It's such an easy collection to pick up and i actually enjoyed it more than her stand alone novels .

I requested this short story collection because I so enjoyed Lily King’s recent novel, Writers and Lovers, and, despite preferring the novel form to the short story, I was not disappointed. King’s descriptions are stunning - the description of a gay man’s thoughts as he watches his straight best friend get married is particularly memorable - and the plot lines are also original and compelling. Overall, I would recommend to anyone who enjoys short stories which focus on the complicated dynamics between humans.

After reading Writers and Lovers last year, I knew that I had to read King’s backlog and future work, and when I had the chance to read Five Tuesdays in Winter, I was so incredibly excited. Five Tuesdays in Winter is a short story collection, featuring nine different stories surrounding nine different characters.

This collection is relatively short, but there is so much packed into this collection that it doesn’t suffer whatsoever. Each story is beautifully written, completely individual and meaningful in their own way. I felt like I knew each of the characters like I know my friends, even though they had very few pages to become a fully fledged character.

I would definitely recommend this, my favourite stories were Creature, Timeline and Five Tuesdays in Winter, but honestly, I loved them all so much that I wouldn’t say I had a ‘least favourite.’ I’ll definitely be making a conscious effort to read her previous works.

I love a good short story. Ever since ripping through the Point Horror Tales of Terror anthologies, I found that I like the way a good short story collection fits together and builds a whole view of the author’s world - a snapshot of different characters we pop in and out of and want to know more about.

“Five Tuesdays in Winter” is one of those collections. The titular story centres on a grumpy bookseller who realises he has feelings for his coworker as his teenage daughter does, and engineers a weekly Tuesday Spanish session. It goes against the rest of most of the stories as it tells the tale of a present father - most of the others are about absent fathers and the lengths we go to replace them. A young boy is looked after by a couple of frat boys in his large house while his parents go to France for a holiday without him, while in another a woman and her daughter mourn the loss of their husband/father and come to terms with what he has (or hasn’t) left behind.

I felt like these are in the vein of JD Salinger’s “Franny & Zooey” - tales of lacklustre riches, being bored at a tennis club or hoping for an affair in the swimming pool. People who you actually might not like if you met them in real life but warm to in the pages you read.
I also felt a nod towards F Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”, particularly in the first story of a large house at the end of the spit, all alone and seemingly perfect on the surface. There’s a reference to a green light in the pool which reminded me of the light in West Egg too, that mysterious luminescence which has inspired essays and fan fiction without really getting an answer.

Lily King’s 2020 novel, “Writers & Lovers” is on my TBR and has received lots of high praise - I hope and feel like it’s similarly written to this story collection.

The themes are well tended to, drawing together each set of characters like they live in a cul de sac or some far off, well heeled estate (or in the staff quarters). France and being French, or speaking French, the aforementioned absent fathers and affairs of the heart all feature highly.

The setting was interesting too - it read like it could be set in the 1930s or maybe 1950s, but then mentioned cheerios and text messages in passing so it had to be contemporary.

I recommend this for fans of JD Salinger, Sally Rooney and Brandon Taylor.

Thanks as always to Netgalley and Pan MacMillan for the DRC - this was published in January this year and is available to buy!

his is a collection of short stories that are a pleasure to read. Some of them are moving, some are thoughtful and some are sad but they are all enjoyable to read. I especially enjoyed the moving story of German mother trying to reconnect with her daughter after her husband’s premature death. All of these stories cover family life and loss and they are excellently told. You sympathise with the characters both young and old and the short stories cover both first loves and sad endings.

You sympathise with the characters both young and old and the short stories cover both first loves and sad endings.

On this last Tuesday (222sday!) of Winter, I wanted to publish my review of Lily King's new novel, Five Tuesdays in Winter. I recently read it after reading my first book by her, Writers and Lovers, and I expected it to be very similar. However, I was really surprised when it was a wildly different novel. ⁠
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King has a very unique way with words, and she has a distinct style to her narrative voice that I could only compare with how iconic Sally Rooney’s writing is. King might be the American counterpart to Rooney, not only for style but also for content and the deep dives into the details in moments between characters. ⁠
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Five Tuesdays in Winter is a collection of short stories about the different kinds of relationships and little moments in peoples lives. They all look into a conversation, a day in the life, the beginning or end of relationships and really focus on the details that otherwise might get lost. ⁠
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I didn’t know it was a collection of short stories when I read it, which was jarring after the first chapter or story, but overall I really enjoyed it and probably will revisit King’s writing again.

The Dordogne story was one of the best short stories I read in ages. But another story was so terrible and disturbing so that this story collection was just so so.

This was such a good, introspective read. I love the cover, the writing style, the characters. I would give this to readers looking for an emotive read.

A mixed selection of short stories, I couldn't get into the first one at all and nearly gave up on the book, so glad I didn't. Many of the other stories are wonderful little windows into people's lives, my favourite being the one about the grumpy bookseller. An important voice in new American literature.

With thanks to netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is a collection of 10 stories written by Lily King. It's the first time I've read anything by this American author so I was interested to see what they would be like. I read a lot of short fiction for the A level course I teach and some of these I would use to prepare students for the exams.
I really enjoyed about half of them and the other half left me flat and deflated. I'm not sure where the title comes in to it but a lot of them are about taking chances or past regrets and how they affect life in the present.
The stories themselves are well-written but as I said, in about half, I couldn't connect with the characters or feel like where the author left them was very satisfying.
An interesting read!

Thank you to the publishers and netgalley for this arc.

I haven't read anything by this author however I have heard of her and whilst I'm not usually a fan of short stories I really liked this collection. It was beautifully written and has now made me want to go and read her other book!

A collection of unique voices from very different lives tell stories of love, pain, courage and hope. These stories explore parenthood, coming-of-age, chance meetings and romance in such a thoughtful manner. King is clearly a very observant writer because all of the characters and relationships felt wonderfully authentic. I was thoroughly moved at some point of every single story and fell in love with King’s use of metaphor, particularly in the final read The Man At The Door. Be aware of trigger warnings for sexual abuse in both Creature and Hotel Seattle.