Help Yourself

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 and celebrity. Suburban friends fall out after a racist encounter at a birthday party is caught on video and posted; 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. Full of tenderness and compassion, this dazzling collection celebrates our humanity in all its pettiness and glory.