Our first book review of the month comes to us from Robert Boucheron, whose short stories and essays on literature and architecture appear in Alabama Literary Review,Amsterdam Quarterly, The Concrete Desert Review, Fiction International, Louisville Review, New Haven Review, and Saturday Evening Post. Boucheron’s review explores Cara Blue Adams’s debut collection You Never Get It Back, which was released by the University of Iowa Press in December 2021.
This debut story collection follows all the rules, hits all the right notes, and touches on issues of interest to all young women. The issues are the bonds between mother and daughter, older and younger sister, college roommate and best friend, and the man who is a date, lover, suitor, and fiancé. The stories seem to be drawn from the author’s life, and the chronological series suggests a coming-of-age novel or a memoir. Kate Bishop is the heroine. Kate stands for Cara, and the reader naturally confounds the two.
