It Will Come Back to You by Sigrid Nunez has been one of this summer’s many highlights. If the name doesn’t ring a bell, you have something to look forward to. Nunez’s National Book Award-winning novel The Friend still lingers in my mind. It Will Come Back to You is a collection of short stories written throughout her 30-year career. Her writing is deceptively simple, perceptive and very funny, with themes ranging from puberty to dementia, via mother-daughter relationships, an airport nightmare and a couple of dark sexual obsessions, one of which ends in murder. As The New York Times writes, these are “stories that remind us why Sigrid Nunez is one of our best writers”. True indeed.
They are all excellent, but if I had to pick a few favourites, I would choose the sad-funny It’s All Good, the story of a demented woman, a resident of the absurdly named care home New Beginnings, and her obsession with Brad Pitt, which made me laugh out loud.
The Plan has a darker edge. Its protagonist has a gruesome urge to strangle a woman, preferably his wife, but is forced to find a “more deserving” victim. In The Naked Juror, we meet Flora, who, time and time again, is called for jury duty but, frustratingly, is never chosen. That changes when she finds herself on a jury hearing the case of a man accused of murdering his wife called Bruno Sonovabich, a man Flora vaguely recognises.
Carmine, who started life as a foundling in the Bronx and now works in housekeeping at an upscale Manhattan hotel favoured by rock stars and debauched British aristocrats, is the protagonist of The Rabbit’s Foot. Despite racist abuse and the physical demands of her job, Carmine enjoys what she does, much to the consternation of her better-educated, upwardly mobile children. And Carmine, too, has secrets that keep her going.
The subjects of these stories, written over three decades, seem to mature alongside Nunez herself. Although the collection doesn’t tell us which decade each story was written, you get the sense that the racier stories belong to an earlier decade, while ageing makes an appearance several times in the later ones. Taken together, they show the breadth of Nunez’s talent — and her ability to find humour, darkness and humanity in the most unexpected places.
It Will Come Back to You by Sigrid Nunez is published by Virago, 224 pages.
