For Short Story Month:
Dena Santoro has written appreciation of the (bad) girls in my three collections of short stories for the Open Letters blog Like Fire.
The Secret Names of Women
The Secret Names of Women was a Book Sense Selection of the American Booksellers Association.
Two stories from the collection were presented in a staged reading by the Shee Theater Company in Santa Rosa, California.
Carnegie Mellon University Press
ISBN 0-88748-287-2
"Lynne Barrett's stories are literary gems—wise, funny, surprising, enchanting. They manage to be not only about their quirky, marvelous characters, but about America, not in a sociological sense, but in the deeper meanings revealed by art."
—Dan Wakefield, author of Going All the Way
What reviewers had to say:
"If you're a fan of Jayne Anne Phillips, Alice Munro, Lorrie Moore, and all those other great gal writers who write kick-ass short stories, you will definitely enjoy the second collection from Lynne Barrett. These eight tales are united by mostly female protagonists who are picking and choosing between love and lust."
—Jennifer Joseph, San Francisco Bay Guardian
“A bold, decisive talent” --Publishers Weekly
“Wry, lucid optimism” --New York Times
“Each story is a little masterpiece of wit, realism and invention, peopled with characters who seem drawn from contemporary life—life as it is lived in strip malls, along interstates, in nightclubs, roadside attractions.... If one of these stories stands above the rest, it would have to be "The Former Star Carlson," about a young woman who marries a foreign student in her apartment house so he can obtain a green card. With almost incredible economy, Barrett sketches in a large cast of characters—friends, immigration lawyers, INS inspectors—along with significant emotional reversals to tell a story that is as sweet and uplifting as it is utterly realistic and believable. The pleasure offered by these stories is genuine and immense; by the end, the primary criticism most readers will have is that The Secret Names of Women contains only eight stories instead of 16 or 24. --Chauncey Mabe, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
"Terrific collection" --Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazone
The Land of Go
Carnegie Mellon University Press
ISBN 0-88748-044-6
"Knowledge, the kind of knowledge that comes from observation both wide and acute, is Lynne Barrett's forte. . . The Land of Go is a fine start to what ought to be a bright and durable career.
—Fred Chappell, Greensboro News & Record
"Inventory", a story from The Land of Go, was included in two anthologies used in teaching literature to college freshmen: The Lexington Introduction to Literature, Waller, McCormick, Fowler, eds., D.C. Heath, 1987, and in Literature: Reading and Responding to Fiction, Poetry, Drama and the Essay, Joel Wingard, ed., HarperCollins, 1996.