The Roommates
True Tales of Friendship, Rivalry, Romance, and Disturbingly Close Quarters
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
THE SECOND ENTRY IN THE PICADOR TRUE TALES SERIES: ONE OF LIFE'S TRICKIEST RITES OF PASSAGE COLLECTED INTO AN UNFORGETTABLE VOLUME OF STORIES
The fraught relationship between roommates is a true cultural obsession. Shows like Friends, The Golden Girls, The Odd Couple, and New Girl have held us rapt for decades, simultaneously delighting and disconcerting us with their depictions of mismatched couples' cringe-worthy awkwardness and against-all-odds friendship. Maybe it's that uniquely unnatural experience of living with a total stranger that ignites our curiosity, or just that almost all of us, for better or worse, have had one of our own.
In Stephanie Wu's The Roommates, people of all ages reveal their disastrous, hilarious, and sometimes moving stories of making their best friend for life or lifelong nemesis. Learn what it's like to share a room in places as unusual as a thirty-person beach house, a billionaire's yacht, a reality show mansion, and a retirement hotel, and those as familiar as sleepaway camps, boarding schools, and college dorms. Put down your roommate's dirty dishes and passive-aggressive Post-it's for this eye-opening glimpse into how people live together in the modern age.
You'll meet: The Amateur Taxidermist · The Alcoholic Genius · The Kleptomaniac · The Rent Stiffer · The Naked Nanna · The Serial Roommate · The Top Chef · The Recovered Addict · The Russian Missionary · The Obsessive Lesbian · The Impersonator · The Party Poopers...and many more!
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Certainly thorough and wide-ranging, these anecdotal portraits of good roommates and bad roommates have been smoothly edited by Wu (a culture editor at Town & Country and founder of MochiMag.com) for understated readability. These briefs are occasionally hilarious: in "The Faulty Wiring" a college roommate climbs on top of her desk at night and pees on her own laptop, then wonders the next morning if the electricity had gone out. Elsewhere, incidents possess an over-the-top quality that strains credulity, such as the depiction of Midwestern Sandra in "The Multiple Personalities," who suffered from dissociative identity disorder and whose five other church-going roommates made peace with Sandra's various personalities (with names like Blue Eyes and Playgirl, for example) and even attended therapy with her. Divided into life stages such as "Growing Pains," "Freshman Year," and "Recent Grads," the tales cover the gamut from sharing dorms in small college towns to roach-infested pads in New York City or RV traveling, while the most eclectic section, "Adventures Abroad," even attains an inspired quality, as in the strange and beautiful influence one Botswana roommate wrought over her American counterpart in "The African Exchange Student." There are, curiously, several essays about living with Mormons, lots of party boys and girls, bed bugs, suicide attempts, and kleptomaniacs, but mostly there remain the all-too-familiar, agonizing chronicles of the passive-aggressives and the plain incompatibles.
Customer Reviews
Perfect ending
I'm not going to give it away but the ending to this book is hilarious and amazing. Thank you so muchh!