It Will Come Back to You

Wryly funny and slyly provocative, she excels at quick sketches of her characters * Daily Mail *
These bitesized stories send shivers down the spine … Sigrid Nunez creates whole lives in fewer than 20 pages * John Self, The Times *
A rare pleasure … Nunez runs the gamut of human emotion in this kaleidoscopic, boundless collection … unforgettable … These stories, steeped in realism but measured by hopefulness, are worthy equals to Nunez’s award-winning prose * Irish Times *
A strange, perceptive and unsettling look at the lives of ordinary people … Her stories are lucid and familiar … very funny and very strange … Her fiction is at its best when it has teeth … dwells in discomfort and makes you feel something * Financial Times *
This collection of her short stories will make you want to hunt out all the novels this wonderful American author has written over the past three decades. For now, treat yourself to 13 of her good-humoured, refreshingly honest tales * Sainsbury’s Magazine *
Sigrid Nunez is one of American fiction’s most crisp and realized voices. Like the food in a good restaurant, her prose is excellent but unfussy * New York Times *
Typical of Nunez’s astonishing precision as a writer, of which this collection provides a dazzling display * Esquire, ‘The 18 Best Summer Books of 2026’ *
It Will Come Back to You should make you want to imbibe every word Nunez has ever written * TLS *
One of the great writers of our time … With remarkable tenderness, Nunez navigates themes of aging, death and mental illness. Reading her work feels like having lunch with your smartest, wisest, most empathetic friend * Los Angeles Times *
The stories show Nunez’s gift for turning apparently ordinary lives into something stranger, funnier and more searching than they first appear * The i Paper, ‘The best new books to read in July 2026’ *
Nunez injects these stories with a deep tenderness and a wry sense of humor, all the while challenging our conceptions of what it means to live an ordinary life * Harpers Bazaar, Best Summer Books 2026 *
Nunez continues to return to the possiblity that experience acquires shape only when it is turned into a narrative, but warns that the resulting shape may be misleading … Nunez embeds questions about narrative in reflective, conversational accounts of ordinary experience * Spectator *
With It Will Come Back to You, Nunez wonderfully accomplishes in her stories what we have come to expect of her from her marvellous novels: a no-nonsense honesty, a matchless intelligence, an unswerving empathy, and a breathtaking intimacy of voice. Her prose manages at once to be absolutely singular, yet so easy to love. Every page is a joy, not a single sentence is wasted. Nunez has long since established herself as one of my favourite authors * Jenny Mustard *
A treat … each story showing how Nunez can turn the everyday into something quietly devastating, then slip in a line that makes you laugh despite yourself. Expect grief, art, love, mortality, and the strange intimacy of ordinary conversation-now in perfectly tart, bite-size form * Oprah Daily, Best Books of the Summer 2026 *
There are two kinds of people in the world, people who haven’t read Sigrid Nunez, and people who love Sigrid Nunez’ * Claire Kohda *
This is a wonderful collection and brilliant showcase for Sigrid Nunez’s many talents. She excels in the intriguing start, the curious setting and the mischievous end. Her uncertain protagonists in an uncertain world are the perfect literary creations: vexed in their own lives but delightful to encounter * Bidisha *
Masterful … Nunez’s sharp wit remains a steady presence across the collection, roaming freely from one heavy subject to the next without ever slipping into sentimentality. It’s a treasure trove * Publishers Weekly, starred review *
Nunez is a strong writer at every level, but she’s especially good at closings that nail their points in place, from the everyday to the sublime … Nunez’s stories make a welcome addition to an already much esteemed body of work * Kirkus Reviews (starred review) *
A dazzling collection … Each of these stories, even the most ostensibly wispy, reverberates long after it ends * Booklist (starred review) *

Sigrid Nunez is the New York Times bestselling author of The Friend, winner of the 2018 National Book Award, and of seven other novels, including Salvation City, The Last of Her Kind, What Are You Going Through and The Vulnerables. She is also the author of Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag. Her books have been translated into over forty languages and two of her books have recently been made into films: What Are You Going Through was the basis for Pedro Almodovar’s The Room Next Door (starring Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore) and The Friend has been made into a film starring Naomi Watts.

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