First, a disclosure: I am not a short-story fan. I want total immersion when I read, and the brief reading-time of most short stories doesn't allow that. Even so, I understand they are different in nature from novels -- where a novel might have an arc that reaches from sunrise to sunset in the characters' lives, the short story may be but the ephemeral flash of a falling star. Or, in the case of this collection, the sudden pop of a flashbulb. It may capture the instant, but it doesn't do much to illuminate.

"Back Talk" is a collection of short, short-shorts, and vignettes, mostly about 20-something women who don't know what the want, except that it's not what they have. After a few of them, Constant Reader is mostly just annoyed.

Yeah, okay, you and your sister used to hide in the big old house you lived in, and then she grew up and went to Africa. You met a guy in the park and really liked him but he went back to Chicago and his old girlfriend. A young woman spending a year studying in Paris has non-sexual affairs with a number of young men.

So what?

Because the entries are so short, there's really no room for characters to grow or even to learn something about themselves that might eventually lead to growth, or change, or resolution.

Let's just say they weren't my cup of tea and let it go at that. ( )

3.5 a collection of stories about women and girls in transition: on the cusp of adulthood, or between tween and teen, or at the end of or beginning of a relationship, or on the verge of a family sea change, or on the edge of independence. The epigraph: "It was different for a girl" by Susan Minot sets the author's intent. In between is not a comfortable place to be and Lazarin shows this - nothing is sugar-coated and some of the situations are prickly to read, choices not always being made with the best intentions or forethought, but to quote a cover blurb: a "poignant take on life and loving and loneliness." ( )

"But really, had she wanted to know those things? Did they seem, once she did know, like secrets? She knows so well the burden of being told, of knowing, and how impossible it is to unknow, to forget. . . But she understands, too, that someone in the family has to be the one who forgets just enough every now and then, so they can keep moving forward." ( )

Even the best of short story collections are uneven. I used to find this odd—how could a writer who wrote such a fabulous story follow it with such a crap story? I realize now that it makes sense. I mean, after all, if you look at any author's complete body of works, you'll find great works and ho-hum works. No writer is one-hundred percent consistent. The difference is in presentation. We think of a collection of short stories as a complete work. A novelist's whole career is not held under the same scrutiny.

Danielle Lazarin's Back Talk is no different. There are stories I really enjoyed. And stories I could've done without. The difference was the grouping of these stories. Normally, a collection starts with one or two good stories and follows it with a dud, then another good story and several duds. Depending on the total number of stories in the collection and the ratio of good stories, all this may vary, of course, but often the middle contains several lackluster stories that lead into a final one or two good stories.

So when I started reading Back Talk and found that the first several stories barely held my attention, I assumed the whole collection was not for me. Midway, the stories really started to improve however. In fact, story after story was quite wonderful. At this point, I questioned whether it was me: perhaps some preconceived notion I had about the collection, or some blockage in my personal life. I decided that, when finished, I'd go back and read one of the first few stories that I found to be far from special.

On a second reading, the story I selected was slightly more enjoyable, but I still didn't love it. So maybe this collection is oddly uneven, but it does contain several wonderful stories. The best of these stories really get into the minds of their protagonists. They're quiet stories about everyday events, but they're full of heart. In these character-driven stories, I think it ultimately comes down to connection. I was pulled into the mind of some of these characters, not into the minds of others. Readers of character-centric short fiction should give Back Talk a try. ( )

Danielle Lazarin’s Back Talk consists of sixteen short stories, four of which are short short stories, slightly longer than sketches. The sixteen stories focus on women undergoing transitions from their early teens through, presumably, their mid-thirties. Transitions? Yes, transitions of geography; of friendships; of partnerships, marriages, and romances; and of relationships with siblings and parents. I’ll leave it to the literary prize jurors, some of whom undoubtedly will be weighing Back Talk in their 2018 deliberations, to decide whether or not these are linked short stories; to me, they are no less linked than David Szalay’s All That Man Is, shortlisted for the Booker in 2016.

At her best, Lazarin is pitch perfect in depicting individual moments that define relationships. Here’s the main character in “Floor Plans” discussing her friends’ reactions to her pending divorce: “They take sides, though we don’t think here are sides to take. Mutual, mutual. The whole world splits.” And in “Spider Legs,” a teenager being driven by her divorced father to the airport to reunite with her mother and older brother and sister in Paris: “’I was thinking, while you’re there, you might as well check out the American university.’ We’ve had this conversation before. “I want to go to school in the States,’ I remind him. . . ‘Well, perhaps it could be on your list. I hear its art history department is quite good.’ ‘That’s Jill, Dad. I like science.’ ‘I know that, Caitlin, but maybe you’ll surprise yourself,’ he snaps at me, but his face is pink with shame.” Or in “Landscape No. 27,” a married woman thinking of her lover: “I saw you thinking about turning around and offering your hand to me, but you knew I wouldn’t take it, and neither of us wanted to say we had gone off course, because it would sound like a bad metaphor and the idea that might be true was too much for either of us to admit.”

Among the most affecting stories is “Weighed and Measured,” which follows Franny and Lucia from the summer of their 14th years until they are 18. They have a tight but tenuous friendship: “Around Lucia’s and Patrick’s mothers Franny understands that what’s between her and Lucia can always be broken, that it will.” Franny and Lucia grow up, move to separate schools, Franny falls in like with Lucia’s upstate cousin. Nothing extraordinary happens in their lives, but Lazarin unfolds adolescence delicately and surely.

“Spider Legs” and “Second-Chance Family” both feature Caitlin and her older siblings, Jill and Jack. Hope, the offspring of her father’s “secondchance family”, babysits for the now domesticate Jill, to her mother’s apparent annoyance and perhaps dismay. Again, nothing extraordinary happens in their lives, but Lazarin nails growth and development and changing people and relationships beautifully.

I usually sample short story collections, reading one or two, then returning weeks or months later to read a third or a fourth. But Back Talk pulled me along like a novel, investing me thoroughly in its young women, learning to understand them more and more.

I would like to thank Penguin Books and NetGalley for making an electronic advanced reader’s copy available to me in exchange for this honest review, and I would also like to thank @pronounced_ing for recommending ( )