Caitlin Macy

  • Increase font size
  • Default font size
  • Decrease font size
Spoiled: stories

spoiled_cover

Caitlin Macy’s debut novel The Fundamentals of Play was heralded as a Gatsbyesque examination of love and class in Manhattan. Now, in her sophisticated and provocative story collection Spoiled, Macy turns her unsparing eye on affluent and educated women who nevertheless struggle to keep their footing in their relationships and life.

In “Annabel’s Mother,” a young woman does a good deed for her nanny, only to have it go horribly wrong. “Bait and Switch” chronicles a lifelong rivalry between two sisters. A self-made woman struggles to gain the upper hand with her comically self-assured cleaning woman in “The Red Coat.” And in “Taroudant,” a newly married woman desperate for authentic experience makes a rash decision to leave the grounds of her Moroccan luxury hotel.

Macy’s voice is as straightforward as it is original in these stories, and her characters deftly nuanced. Full of surprising, sometimes shocking insights and simmering with outrage, compassion, and humor, Spoiled is a remarkable collection from a boldly talented writer.



Praise for Spoiled

“Wise and cryptic…Intriguing…(Smart, apt and slightly unexpected)…Sharply insightful.”—Janet Maslin, The New York Times


“[Macy] has an aptitude for anthropological apprehension, that dark, pith-helmet-wearer’s art of classifying peope by their habits and social markers.”—The New York Times


“Wickedly smart, unwittingly timely…[Macy] attains a wonderfully transgressive Cheever-like honesty.”—Vogue


“Laser-sharp…probes the heartbreak of high expectations, the self-hatred that can go hand and hand with a ferocious sense of entitlement. Read it and squirm.”—O Magazine


“An impressive, psychologically nuanced collection of stories on class and gender in New York…Sophisticated and intelligent, Macy offers the kind of subtlety that turns the ordinary into the sublime.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred)


“Superb…Issues of class and feminity are woven throughout many of these tales, and often make for interesting perceptions and sly conclusions.”—Booklist


“Macy is a writer [Edith] Wharton might well approve of…Her prose is tidy, assured, and graceful, and its restraint lends this book an old-fashioned clarity and confidence . . . In the end, these stories aren’t about money so much as they are about wanting, be it naked or sublimated, and about the distance between aqnxious women and their resolutely logical, maddeningly literal-minded men—and that’s what transmutes this book into an enjoyable read even for those of us who will never use the word summer as a verb.”—Elle


“Rewarding…Macy is especially adept at slyly pointing out the absurdities inherent in a social set where renting a summerhouse is a source of shame.”—Publishers Weekly


“Who else today writes so accurately about the impossibilities of privilege as Caitlin Macy? Packed with real wit and genuine rage, Spoiled is a gin-flavored litmus test, a  social X-ray set on stun, a grand entertainment, an argument starter. These deft morality tales grip us like the best gossip—then jolt us into feeling.”—Ed Park, author of Personal Days


“I was completely captivated by the keenly observed, superbly written stories in Spoiled. Caitlin Macy's characters are educated, strong-willed, and sometimes difficult girls and women who alternate, as all of us do, between lying to themselves and facing the truth; Macy's depiction of them, set against a very contemporary backdrop of class, gender, urbanism, and ambition, is so entertaining that it's easy to overlook how well-crafted this collection is. I'm hugely impressed and plan to recommend Spoiled to all my friends.”—Curtis Sittenfeld, author of American Wife
 
 

The New York Times Book Review

"Other People's Airs" by Kaui Hart Hemmings in the Sunday New York Times Book Review.

Read more...
 

The New Yorker: Book Bench

"The Exchange: Caitlin Macy" is featured in "The Book Bench" section of the New Yorker online edition.

Read more...
 

Editor's Choice, The New York Times Book Review

Spoiled was an Editor's Choice in the April 5 New York Times Book Review.

Read more...
   

Time Magazine

“Husbands, wives, nannies and children orbit one another in the cold moral vacuum of the uptown Manhattan. Caitlin Macy’s stories dissect the lives of the rich and miserable with tender but surgical precision. This is what happens to gossip girls 20 years down the line.”—Time
 

Bloomberg review, March 2009

"Nailing Right Co-op, Nanny Remains Key for Cutthroat N.Y. Haves" Review by Laurie Muchnick

Read more...
 

Vogue, March 2009

To Have and Have Not The women in Caitlin Macy's wickedly smart,unwittingly timely short story collection, Spoiled (Random House), seem to get everything the want—a house in the Hamptons, a honeymoon in Morocco—yet feel uneasy in lives of relative privilege. A Gramercy Park mother's good deed for her nanny goes awry; an ungainly teen struggles to gain the upper hand with her pampered horse.

Read more...
 

O Magazine review, March 2009

Pride and Privilege They are the other needy: well-heeled women who court the approval of their housekeepers: ambivalent pampered girlfriends and wives who exhaust the patience of men: impudent, whiny young girls panicked by untamable tears: solitary high achievers licking their wounds.

Read more...
 

The New York Times: Styles profiles the author

"Between a Soft and Cushy Place" profiles the author, written by Eric Konigsberg for the Styles section.

Read more...
 

Kirkus gives a starred review

Nine years after her winning debut novel (The Fundamentals of Play, 2000), Macy follows with an impressive, psychologically nuanced collection of stories on class and gender in New York.

Read more...
 

Elle Magazine, March 2009

Women who write fiction about money and social status are routinely compared to Edith Wharton. This generally constitutes a grave case of mistaken identity, because the writers in question lack Wharton’s tenderness and sense of tragedy—their narratives are mere travelogues through walk-in closets, their themes no more complex than the notion that the rich are bitchier than you and me. With a title like Spoiled (Random House), you might expect Caitlin Macy’s new story collection to be stocked with similarly campy sagas of shopping and revenge (and you might suspect that her publisher hopes fans of Gossip Girl will think so, too, and snap it up).

Read more...
 

Booklist review

Educated, independent, and privileged New York women take most of the leading roles in Macy’s new collection, following The Fundamentals of Play (2000).
Read more...