<b>Different</b> to anything I've read before . . . Be warned, it can get a little dark at times, but the collection is <b>worth it</b>

Stylist

A <b>powerful</b>, two-fisted collection with heart under its surface.

Sunday Times

A writer of prodigious, <b>arresting talent</b>

Guardian

Gay tells<b> intimate, deep, wry tales of jaggedly dimensional women</b>. . . . Be they writer, scientist, or stripper, Gay's women suffer grave abuses, mourn unfathomable losses, love hard, and work harder

Booklist

Gay expands her writing prowess with this collection featuring colorful women protagonists . . . <b>Refreshing yet intricate</b> . . . This work will appeal to lovers of literary and feminist fiction

Library Journal (starred review)

Unified in theme ? the struggles of women claiming independence for themselves ? but wide-ranging in conception and form . . . Gay is <b>an admirable risk-taker </b>in her exploration of women's lives and<b> new ways to tell their stories</b>

Kirkus Reviews

<b>Astonishing, arresting, and staggering</b>

Book Riot

Gay has fun with these ladies. Her narrative games aren't rulesy. She plays with structure and pacing . . . She moves easily from first to third person, sometimes within a single story. She creates worlds that are firmly realist and worlds that are fantastically far-fetched

New York Times

<b>Gut-wrenching </b>. . .They aren't just characters. They are our mothers, sisters and partners. They are human. They are us . . . <i>Difficult Women</i> is not a collection of happy stories, but these are real stories about real experiences and women seeking, <i>deserving</i> happy endings. They aren't victims but survivors . . . <b>Gay makes mosaics out of these women</b>, seeing them as perfectly imperfect wholes in a world that routinely tries to break them down to pieces.

USA Today

The great James Baldwin once said, "You want to write a sentence as clean as a bone. That is the goal." In "Difficult Women," Gay achieves that goal. Her writing is<b> unfussy, well matched to the women and men she's created</b>, and she finds a <b>distinct rhythm both elegant and plainspoken</b> . . . In "Difficult Women," Gay gives these often-overlooked lives <b>color and meaning</b>. From a ramshackle Michigan trailer park to the affluence and ennui of a gated community in Florida - and myriad points in between - Gay writes of chances missed and unexpected joy, love gone awry or resurrected, and the slivers of hope that <b>keep these fascinating women alive</b>.

The Boston Globe

The women here are complex, but not in the typical way of fiction. Much like Mireille, the protagonist of Gay's profound and violent novel, "An Untamed State," the women here reveal themselves in how their minds adjust to a world that seems bent on violating their bodies . . . <b>This collection begs for a slow, serious reading.</b>

Star Tribune

Dark, yes, difficult, yes, but also <b>luminous, transporting, and totally worth the effort.</b>

Vogue.com

Gay's signature <b>dry wit and piercing psychological depth </b>make every story <b>mermerisingly unusual and simply unforgettable.</b>

Harper's Bazaar

Gay brings the<b> powerful voice</b> that flows through her work as a novelist and cultural critic to the 21 short stories in her first collection . . . Gay's "difficult women" are <b>unforgettable</b>.

BBC.com

Gay's writing encompasses so much-simultaneously <b>direct, funny, whipsmart</b>, sometimes painful, and always <b>thought-provoking</b> . . . Difficult Women [is] <b>wonderful.</b>

Chicago Review of Books