Better Times

Short Stories

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Pub Date 1 Sep 2018 | Archive Date 1 Sep 2018

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Description

Winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction, the stories in Better Times focus on what’s happening in places people don’t think to look. Women, sometimes displaced, often lonely, are at the heart of these stories. In Better Times Sara Batkie focuses on the moments in women’s lives when the wider world is wrapped up in other matters: a father and daughter, separated by time and an ocean, dreaming of each other; a girl in a home for “troubled women” imagining the journey of the first dog in space; a phantom breast returning to haunt a woman after her mastectomy; a young woman giving birth to a litter of eggs. Such are the ordinary women weathering extraordinary circumstances in Better Times.

Divided into three sections covering the recent past, our current era, and the world to come, the stories gathered here—with characters stymied by loneliness, motherhood, illness, even cataclysmic climate change—interrogate the idea that so-called better times ever existed, particularly for women. 

 

Winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction, the stories in Better Times focus on what’s happening in places people don’t think to look. Women, sometimes displaced, often lonely, are at the...


Advance Praise

“Sara Batkie is a writer for our times: lyrical and smart, clear-eyed and true. Better Times may portend just that—better times, at least for literature, in these dark hours.”—Darin Strauss, author of Half a Life, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award


“With a controlled ferocity of perception, Sara Batkie lays bare a world in which all of us are spies and strangers, both to one another and ourselves. She’s a kind of Jean Rhys for our time, and this is a haunting first collection.”—Brian Morton, author of Florence Gordon and Starting Out in the Evening


Better Times is a book of quiet passions, narrated with grace. In these nine finely observed stories, Batkie explores with empathy the impolite agonies that change the gravity of her characters’ worlds.”—Tracy O’Neill, author of The Hopeful?


“These stories are epic in scope with a frank beauty that embellishes the book’s stirring insights. A debut of gems, Batkie’s work is important fun.”—Seth Fried, author of The Great Frustration


“The men and women in Better Times are adrift. Yet they keep looking for ways to connect and love, and each of Sara Batkie’s beautiful sentences tethers them more deeply, to the reader’s heart and our collective human soul.”—Hannah Tinti, author of The Good Thief and The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley


“In her debut collection, Sara Batkie displays the inventive brio of Karen Russell and the omnivorous range of Jim Shepard. Artfully crafted and tenderly told, these stories will break your heart and set fire to your imagination.”—Jon Michaud, author of When Tito Loved Clara

“Sara Batkie is a writer for our times: lyrical and smart, clear-eyed and true. Better Times may portend just that—better times, at least for literature, in these dark hours.”—Darin Strauss, author...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9781496207876
PRICE US$17.95 (USD)
PAGES 156

Average rating from 6 members


Featured Reviews

This book reminded me of how much I enjoy reading quality short stories. Each story was compelling and unique. They all hooked me from the beginning, and I felt like the stories got progressively better as I read. I cared about the characters and wanted to know more about them. I didn't want each story to end, so that's a good sign! The only complaint I had was that several of the stories had no discernable boundaries from the story before or after. Not even spacing. This was confusing on an ereader, but won't be a problem on a published version. I would certainly read more by this author.

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I had a really hard time getting into this book of stories and couldn’t really get emotionally involved with any of the characters. I read the first two stories a.m. s then gave up.

I thank NetGalley, the author and publisher for a preview copy in exchange for my honest review.

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This book was difficult for me to get into. If a book of short stories does not grab me on the first few pages of the first story, I am very likely not going to continue.

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Whew. What a collection of wonderful little weird stories about women. There is a reason that Sara Batkie is an award winning writer.

This collection is divided into three sections, the past, the present and the future. Every section and in fact, every story was outstanding. My personal favorites were "When Her Father Was An Island" and "Cleavage".

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book .

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