Property: Stories Between Two Novellas

Shriver (The Mandibles) has a reputation for being arrogant and combative, traits she shares with a number of protagonists in this first collection, and she makes good use of those characters. The collection opens with Jillian, in "The Standing Chandelier," contemplating why she is so widely disliked and ends with judgmental Sara in "The Subletter." Sara's pettiness keeps her isolated, stuck, and, by novella's end, unemployed in Northern Ireland. The property in "Property" is real estate, and homes and housing play a major role in many of the pieces. In "The Self-Seeding Sycamore," neighbors fight over a tree spanning two back yards. "Domestic Terrorism" features an adult child who refuses to move out of his parents' basement; the married couple in "Negative Equity" breaks up during a housing crisis but can't afford to move out of the house; and an artistic couple in "Vermin" watch their marriage fall apart after buying their funky rental house in Brooklyn and starting to renovate.