Help Yourself

A STUNNING NEW COLLECTION OF THREE STORIES BY THE SUNDAY TIMES AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF RODHAM AND AMERICAN WIFE 'Tearing apart contemporary American society one microscopic fibre at a time, Sittenfeld is up there in a league of her own' GUARDIAN'Nobody else writes with such precison and amusement about the absolute inability of men and women to understand each other' RED MAGAZINE____________________________________Sittenfeld's wryly hilarious and insightful new collection, HELP YOURSELF, illuminates human experience and gracefully upends our assumptions about class and race, envy and disappointment, gender dynamics and celebrity.Suburban friends fall out after a racist encounter at a birthday party is caught on video and posted on Facebook, leaving one woman unable to show her face at the school gates; an illustrious Manhattan film crew are victims of their own snobbery when they underestimate a pre-school teacher from the Mid-West; and a group of young writers fight about love and narrative style as they compete for a prestigious bursary.Connecting each of these three stories is Sittenfeld's truthful yet merciless eye, as her characters stagger from awkwardness, to humiliation and, if they're lucky, to reconciliation. Full of tenderness and compassion, this dazzling collection celebrates our humanity in all its pettiness and glory.Praise for CURTIS SITTENFELD:'You won't want these stories to end' REESE WITHERSPOON'Has a rare and magical combination of accessiblity, with and serious thinking' SUNDAY TIMES'Perfect miniatures in deadpan prose' GUARDIAN'Clear-eyed and compulsive' MAIL ON SUNDAY