Power Play: Reading Kristen Roupenian’s ‘You Know You Want This’
In the last decade, a small but mighty contingent of young female writers has been putting out novels and short story collections that examine what it’s like to be a young woman with all its messy nuances. Ottessa Moshfegh crafts weirdo protagonists looking to give up control of their lives in order to find themselves. Catherine Lacey writes of women that have lenses and expectations applied to them, personalities assumed and prescribed by suitors seeking solace in the fantasy of love, not its reality. Halle Butler’s office workers pretend to be excited about bettering themselves socially and financially when it actually withers them inside. Alexandra Kleeman writes about the surreality of being a modern woman, stitching her characters into works that are constantly threatened by unknown gothic menace, the unseen wolf at the door of life. While each writer is distinct in her depiction of being a 20- or 30-something woman in the age of polyamory and Instagram, they’re unified in their desire for a lack of control, or an inability to have it.
In January of this year, Simon & Schuster’s Scout Press released Kristen Roupenian’s , a collection of stories that gained hype based on her popular story, “Cat Person,” which focused on a bad date between
