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Katherine Heiny

 Katherine Heiny has skills that make me think of Lorrie Moore: She moves from funny to sad in the span of two or three words. It's not crucial that a writer can make a reader laugh--but how nice it is when a sense of humor is part of the package.


Heiny's new book, "Games and Rituals," has two toothbrushes on the cover. That's because the heroine of one story, the title story, has a preoccupation with toothbrushes. She has moved to New York to follow her boyfriend, even though this change means unpleasant "temping work." Her boyfriend insists on keeping his own apartment, and his wariness requires him to truck his toothpaste back and forth from his place to his girlfriend's place. The thought of purchasing a second toothbrush (a "travel" brush) just seems to be "too much." We can see where this relationship is headed.

Heiny's heroine is a stand-in for anyone who recalls being adrift in "the twentysomething decade." (So, the heroine is a stand-in for literally everyone.) She seems a bit mean; she entertains herself by inventing stories about the people she sees on subways. A teen girl seems to care more about a teen boy; our heroine predicts the fling will last just until the prom. ("She'll have sex with him, and then he will dump her because he doesn't respect her. Men are the worst.")

Another game is the spying game: Our heroine will covertly read her boyfriend's emails and text messages--but only the missives that have been drafted within the past 24 hours. This rule allows her to think she has some virtue. She isn't crazily digging into the archive. It's on one of her spying adventures that she discovers the boyfriend has an admissions letter from UVA--and he is choosing to be secretive about this letter.

All of this may seem low-stakes, but if you're 23, and you're losing your boyfriend, it feels like the world is ending. Heiny knows exactly how the story unfolds--and she makes you *become* a twentysomething again, at least for ten pages. That's a kind of magic trick.

"Games and Rituals" was released this past Tuesday. I think Heiny's "name" will continue to get brighter, and I think (for book nerds) this new title will be a big deal.
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