Press & Quotes
Praise for Reconsidering Happiness
“I was captivated by Sherrie Flick’s meticulous and intelligent study of Margaret and Vivette, and the men they share. Reconsidering Happiness is a courageously intimate novel about the young women of modern America, their friendships, their betrayals, and their anxious cravings for everything from sex to pastry.”
—Jim Crace, author of Being Dead and The Pesthouse
“Reading Sherrie Flick’s big beautiful Buick of a book is like taking a road-trip through that landscape we call life. It is full of feeling and caring, passion and pain, every page rich with illuminating surprises of timing and grace. My best advice is to drive this book slowly, savoring its passage. So, say your tank is full. The sky is big and blue. You have some heartbroke Hank Williams song on the radio. The road ahead is endless as it points toward that horizon called brave beginnings. Open this wonderful novel. Turn it on. Go.”
—Chuck Kinder, author of Honeymooners: A Cautionary Tale
“Reconsidering Happiness captures all the contradictory impulses of falling in and out of love—the lust and wanderlust, the contentment and restlessness, the secret loyalties, the hard compromises. Sherrie Flick has written a wise and elegant novel.”
—John Dalton, author of Heaven Lake
“Reconsidering Happiness is a feast of love, lust, longing, loneliness, and home-made baked goods—but most of all it’s a mouth-watering, yeasty feast of language. A fresh, hip, witty, and poignant novel peopled with a quirky and appealing cast of characters.”
—Marly Swick, author of The Summer Before the Summer of Love and Evening News
“Flick’s lushly imagined evocation of place and her subtle delineations of emotional journeys are married to a vibrant, wide-eyed take on the bonds that bind and liberate. Moving, witty, memorable.”—Elise Levine, author of Requests and Dedications and Driving Men Mad
“Beautiful evocation of landscape and of the way that people’s lives intersect across time and space. Best novel set in a bakery, ever.” –Emily Mitchell, author of The Last Summer of the World
“Inviting, warm, rich and complex.” –Sherri Hallgren, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“Rich with provocative details and intimate character development …” –Nicolette Milholin, Montgomery News
“Now Ceres [Bakery] has one more attraction for its customers: It’s the setting of a novel, ‘Reconsidering Happiness’ by Sherrie Flick …” –Clara Silverstein, The Boston Globe
“In her descriptions of food, the Nebraskan landscape, and the rhythms of work at a tourist town bakery, Flick indulges in sensual detail with pleasurable results.” –Publishers Weekly
“Alternating between time and perspectives, and spanning the two coasts, this introspective, conversational, travelogue-like novel captures the pensive force driving the two women’s personal journeys, and how the women are illuminated by sparks of reconciliation along the way.”-Leah Strauss, Booklist
“Flick consistently imbues the world with a supernatural wonder by focusing on the essential details and describing them with a concrete vividness. It’s a novel that is so much about finding one’s place, and the beauty of Flick’s prose gives each setting the feeling of a lucid dream, each image having its place in both the world and the characters’ psyches.” –Randall Brown, The Los Angeles Review
“Flick’s narrative descriptions of Nebraska are dazzling, as are her portrayals of food and working in a bakery…. Reconsidering Happiness is a thoughtful work for thoughtful readers, who enjoy fine literature. On a scale of 1 to 5 (five being the best) it earns a 5…” –Christopher Zoukis, Basil & Spice: Views on Life
“…the power of this novel lies in the natural interactions and dialog between the characters, the attention to small details, and Flick’s talent in making any scene lyrical and absorbing.” –Tara Masih, Gently Read Literature
“[Reconsidering Happiness] explores the trajectory of two modern American women navigating through relationships, connections, misconnections, betrayals and the entire landscape of human emotions and conditions as Flick explores the spaces existing in between people who care about and for each other.” -Rosalia Scalia, JMWW
“Flick has a great eye for the details that, piled together, can make up a life…. Reconsidering Happiness is an interesting work from a promising writer.” -Rebecca Oppenheimer, Howard County Times
“The book, told in a series of vignettes from different characters in different locations — all linked through love, friendship, sex, and baked goods — has the intimate and looping feeling of a late-night heart-to-heart with a best friend.” –Melissa Meinzer, Pittsburgh City Paper
Praise for I Call This Flirting
“I Call This Flirting is a collection of fever-dreams, haunted by desire, grief, sex, and memory. These are late-night stories, told after midnight, a femme fatale whispering sad and unraveled and lusty tales into your ear. That femme fatale is Sherrie Flick, and she’s a wickedly good writer.”
—John McNally, author of The Book of Ralph and Ghosts of Chicago
“These are sinewy, deeply engaging stories, at once elliptical and satisfying. I Call This Flirting is a marvel: each story is concise as a poem, yet the collection is as seamless and expansive as a novel.”
—Paul Eggers, author of Saviors and The Departure Lounge
In an age when so much fiction speaks only to our heads or to our hearts, I Call This Flirting sings equally, and beautifully, to both.”
—Ann Pancake, author of Given Ground and Strange as This Weather Has Been
