
—Peter Ho Davies, author of The Welsh Girl
The stories in Sara Schaff ’s collection intertwine in complex and fascinating patterns. They are all explorations of the meaning of human connection—what is a mother, a father, a child, a wife, a sister, a friend, a lover? How does it feel to wear the roles we choose to take on? The roles that are forced upon us? Say Something Nice About Me is a thoughtful and provoking book, the beginning to a great career!”
—Dan Chaon, author of Stay Awake
Sara Schaff has written a simmering, quietly explosive collection of stories about innocence and desire, frailty and power, love and doubt. Her prose is subtle and full of grace, her characters clumsy and lovable, her grasp of human connection astonishing. A masterful, moving debut.
—Anna Solomon, author of Leaving Lucy Pear
This assured and compelling debut collection homes in on parents and children, lovers, siblings, co-workers, near-strangers, and makeshift families– all the bonds we struggle to forge or escape. Say Something Nice About Me is filled with beautifully rendered detail and moments of breathtaking emotional insight. Somehow in these twelve stories, Sara Schaff manages to illuminate one of life’s most elusive truths: that moments of coming apart and coming together can be equal in their heartbreak.
—Katharine Noel, author of Halfway House
Sara Schaff is a graceful prose stylist, and her stories are smart and nuanced and rich with subtext. Connection in all its forms—the missed, the enduring, the complex—is the theme of this sharp and spirited collection.
—Elizabeth McKenzie, author of The Portable Veblen
I devoured Sara Schaff’s Say Something Nice About Me over the course of one weekend. Schaff’s stories come with a precision and momentum reminiscent of Maggie Nelson’s Bluets and Katherine Heiny’s Single, Carefree, Mellow. Page after page, sometimes by way of a trailer park tragedy, sometimes by way of a beach-condo vacation gone awry, Schaff delights and surprises her readers with universal insights by way of exquisite particulars. This is a gut-wrenching debut collection.
—Hannah Pittard, author of Listen to Me and Reunion