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.
Buy the Book
Dissects the lives of the rich and miserable with tender but surgical precision. This is what happens to gossip girls twenty years down the line.-Time
Wickedly smart, unwittingly timely…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: The Oprah Magazine
Funny, absurd familiar…Thanks to Macy’s knack for detail and clarity the stories never feel distant.-The New York Times Book Review
What Macy renders so well in these stories…is the queasy nature of self-deception.-San Francisco Chronicle