Curtis Sittenfeld explores power of female friendship in middle age in latest story collection

American writer Curtis Sittenfeld's latest short story collection Show Don't Tell reflects the messiness of modern life and the complexity of human desire and emotion.

From a woman looking back at rude characters from her MFA, years earlier, to another visiting friends she hasn't seen since her divorce, the collection examines the trials and triumphs of middle age with Sittenfeld's signature wit and humour. 

"[Show Don't Tell] is a celebration of middle-aged friendship and friends that you've known for many decades or people that you were very close to in your teens or 20s and then you're still thinking about experiences you had with them when you're in your 50s," said Sittenfeld on Bookends with Mattea Roach. 

Sittenfeld is the writer of novels including Rodham, Prep and Romantic Comedy and the short story collection You Think It, I'll Say It. She is based in Minneapolis.

On Bookends, she joined Roach to discuss the power of female friendship in middle age — and how time can warp the things we've done. 

In Show Don't Tell, there's this through line of close female friendship in midlife. Can you talk a bit about how you came to a point where you wanted to write about this? 

Certainly in my own life, my friendships are incredibly important to me. The friend that I walk with almost every Saturday morning and then the friend that I walk with on Sunday morning, that's more like on a monthly basis. But in both cases, it's like pouring out our souls.

One of them, we walk for an hour and a half and then we stand in front of her house because we're not finished covering it all. I have kids. I have an older mother. A lot of people I know also have kids. They also have aging parents. People's marriages are not always stable through their 40s or before or after that. So there's just like all kinds of life challenges that come up. And I do think, I mean, this is such a sort of obvious thing to say, but such a true thing, having people to confide in and talk through your experiences can really make you feel so much better, even if the external experience doesn't change.

Having people to confide in and talk through your experiences can really make you feel so much better, even if the external experience doesn't change.- Curtis Sittenfeld

Why did you want to explore marriages that are breaking down and marriages that are facing a significant challenge in many of your stories?

In a larger sense, this is my second story collection and I sometimes think, had my story collections come out when I was in my 20s, I would have written stories that were more different from each other for the sake of being different from each other almost to prove to the world that I could.

In Show Don't Tell, these stories are very much about being middle-aged, being American, Midwestern, with mostly female protagonists. Slightly making fun of my own book, I say it's mostly about grouchy, liberal Midwestern women. And so I do think that I'm kind of approaching similar characters from slightly different angles. All writers have their own preoccupations. And I do think a certain kind of intimacy and marriage and family life and relationships is one of my preoccupations.

Some of these stories feature characters who are reflecting on experiences in their late teens or early 20s, but they're doing so from middle age. How does it feel to dive back into that period of time from the perspective of somebody who's in their 40s?

I feel like the passage of time is the ultimate plot twist. If you see a person and you haven't seen them for like 20 or 30 years, it's wild and fascinating, even if they have not done that much that's like objectively interesting — I mean, of course everyone's lives are interesting in their own way — but but a person can barely have left their house for 30 years and it's still like, "Oh my God, they're 30 years older and they barely left their house." That's its own story. That's part of it. 

It's interesting to gain life experience or to go through moments of cultural shift and the meaning of a moment in our own memory changes.- Curtis Sittenfeld

I'm fascinated by the fact that we can have an experience or like an interaction with another person and nothing about that changes. In a way, it's frozen in time and again, 10 or 20 or 30 years passes and our interpretation of that experience or that interaction can completely change. It can be that  we were very resentful of the other person and then we realized, "Oh no, I was in the wrong." Or, I felt like I was so rude, but that person was actually being incredibly sexist or whatever. 

It's interesting to gain life experience or to go through moments of cultural shift and the meaning of a moment in our own memory changes. 

In Show Don't Tell, there's a sense that there's a lot of opportunity and self-assuredness that can come with middle age. Is that something that you were trying to put across at all in this collection? 

I absolutely feel that way. I don't know if I was trying to put it across or if it just came through in terms of my trying to depict a kind of reality that I see, which is like, I think that that middle age can be very painful. Life will have its way with you no matter who you are. 

And it can be really beautiful. You can have these really close friendships, you can learn from your earlier mistakes. You can have these experiences as a parent that are so frustrating and then so deeply touching. You can contextualize that the good stuff should be savoured and you hope the bad stuff will pass. It might or might not pass. There are dark and light elements of the collection, but I see middle age as a really wonderful time, not a depressing time.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. It was produced by Katy Swailes, with help from Ailey Yamamoto.