You Are Not a Stranger Here: Stories

Another book that has been sitting on my shelf for years. This decision to read the physical books on my shelf rather than always reaching for the Kindle or audiobook has been a good one!

A beautiful collection, and a crushingly sad one. The stories mostly focus on the impacts and experience of mental illness. Haslett's characters live with mental illness, some with physical illness, their own and that of people who matter to them. I have often mentioned in reviews that for me, one mark of the very best fiction is the evidence of the writer's pure and true empathy, and the consequent gift of building empathy in the reader. A writer who has not found something to love in every character has not done their job; they have not found the show more characters' humanity. I felt every character here, and I understood their choices, even the frequent choice to not medicate, the choice to feel pan, to exist in delusion, rather than to be numb. In real life, these choices have angered, devastated, and frustrated me when made by people I love, but Haslett helped me to better understand the choice to destroy oneself and others, to blow up lives. This book is one of the best examples of empathic writing I have encountered. It is also one of the most consistently excellent short story collections I have read, for that reason, for the quality of the prose, and the perfectly paced storytelling. The weakest story here is very good, and many are positively transcendent. Two things I feel the need to mention: Adam Haslett was in his 20's when he wrote this Pulitzer finalist; Adam Haslett had already earned his MFA at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and was working toward his JD at Yale Law School when this was published. I don't fully regret my life of sex and drugs and rock and roll (and sure, also of law school), but this cavalcade of accomplishment in Haslett's 20's does give me pause.

I am cutting and pasting my progress notes below for a story-by-story account of reading You Are Not a Stranger Here.

March 24, 2026 – page 49
19.14% "Notes to My Biographer: Who doesn't like a senior citizen who has alienated all? There is a thin line between brilliance and insanity, but we clearly cross it here. Heartbreaking and oddly entertaining.

The Good Doctor: Mental illness remains the theme. How life takes a wrong turn, and addiction and depression are either the result or the cause of the end of hope. What does healing look like? Mercy?"

March 25, 2026 – page 67
26.17% "The Beginnings of Grief: "The nurse in her 20's, wearing lozenge-shaped silver earrings, like the ones my mother had on when I lifted her head from the oven to rest on my lap, asked me lots of questions about where I had been and what had happened." Turning crushing pain into passive suicidality. Eviscerating.

I started this last week, and I am moving through slowly. It's beautiful, and it hurts."

March 28, 2026 – page 89
34.77% "Devotion-This is perhaps the most gutting story yet. The ways we hurt people we love out of jealousy and a longing to fill a gnawing emptiness rang so true. The way the reveal unfurls is brilliant. There was an opportunity for a blazing, dramatic scene that would be a blast to write. The authorial choice to make the devastation so still, quiet, and contained is bold and so true to these characters. Gorgeous!"

March 29, 2026 – page 118
46.09% "So I thought this could not get more eviscerating than Devotion, but War's End -- holy crap! I have seen depression nearly as bad as what is depicted here, but I never got fully inside of it to understand how it makes the depressed person's cruelties seem to them like kindness. A rotting body beside a rotting mind, both suffocating all around them. My heart hurts, and I cried, which I very rarely do."

March 31, 2026 – page 138
53.91% "Reunion brings us a deterioration of body rather than of mind (or I guess of mind and body at some point.) The early death of a young and promising man is a horrible thing, but this was a more clearly defined tragedy than those in the other stories. A beautifully crafted story that surprised me less than the others, but still moved me."

April 3, 2026 – page 194
75.78% "Divination clicks right into the ways we destroy our children out of a desire to protect, out of love, and fear that they will endure the pain we have endured,

My Father's Business Parts 1-7 clicks into another way we destroy our children, through biology and its demands. It also takes us back to the first story, Notes to My Biographer, in a way that hurts because Haslett buffs out none of the dents and scratches."

April 6, 2026 –
The Volunteer turned out to be my least favorite story in the collection. This is not to say it is not good. It is very good. But I don't think Haslett was as successful in finding the connection between the two primary characters, one an adolescent boy with a mentally ill mother and a detached father, a bit of an outcast, terrified to be moving through sexual awakening, and an elderly schizophrenic woman he has volunteered to spend time with who is haunted by ghosts of the past in a way that feels very real to her and who is is also struggling with unfamiliar attachment. It is, as mentioned, very good, but I needed something to come together other than a shared profound loneliness and disconnection. show less

“And what a beautiful season of suffering it has been.”

Wow, I must really be drawn to the dark-side. Did something happen to me in the womb?
This collection of stories, deals with depression, the dying, the mentally ill, the suicidal, all the usual downer suspects and you know what? I loved it. It is beautifully written and heartfelt, following these lost souls as they grapple for a foothold or give up completely.
It’s a stunning debut and the author really seems to have a deep understanding of these sad but universal issues. Highly recommended.

This was a beautiful and thought-provoking but very difficult read. Haslett’s short stories share themes of mental illness, suicide, alienation and grief—boy, do I make this book sound fun! But these stories are striking, and Haslett’s prose is beautiful. “The Beginnings of Grief,” about the violent relationship an orphaned boy tumbles into with a brutal classmate, was especially compelling to me, as was the story about a grown up brother and sister living together, haunted by the memory of their mother’s suicide and the man they both loved. Plus, “Notes to My Biographer” has one of the most startling and effective descriptions of schizophrenia that I’ve ever encountered. These stories are stark and incredible, but not show more recommended reading if you’re feeling the least bit emotionally vulnerable! show less

I found Haslett's stories grimly pleasant. They straddle the line between realism and the bizarre. Haslett's characters are quiet, and unassuming, yet bound to the complexities of destiny and fate. Death is omnipresent, usually lurking off-stage readying itself to pounce on characters already waiting for his arrival. Haslett knows the perfect moment to pull the curtain and leave us, of course, crying over the fate of his broken characters.

You Are Not a Stranger Here
by Adam Haslett

Someone once asked me 'Why is 'literature' always so depressing?' My answer was that it isn't, but when it's this well written, I don't mind a depressing story.

If you take chunks of life, add a little sorrow and grief, a little madness, gobs of uncertainty and say 'make something of this,' Adam Haslett comes up with something like You Are Not A Stranger Here. It can be depressing to read, and yet, there is something hopeful about it, somehow, amidst some hopeless situations. The book creates questions. What is the best way to treat mental illness and what causes mental illness, in the first place? How does it affect the one who is ill and the people around the ill one, not only family, but show more anyone who has contact with that person? How should/do we treat those who are different from us? What is mental illness and what is just different?

At times as I was reading the story seemed destined to become a horror tale. While many of the stories contained herein have some real horror in them, it never quite crosses the line into the horror genre. Only two stories even hint at the supernatural, and in one it's barely even a hint with schizophrenia as the diagnosis. The people here are real. We've met these people. Maybe we are these people. Haslett gives the reader a glimpse at rather unique and ordinary people who may be quite unlike us, or he may be describing us as no one else has. show less

Remarkable writing. A collection of short stories, exploring (mainly) various aspects of mental illness in a rather wide range of characters. One or two of the stories left me a bit unmoved, but most of them were excellent, and some quite disturbing. The characters and their obsessions, depressions, repressions and so on, strike me as authentic. It is hard to imagine that any one person outside of the mental health profession, could have such a broad grasp of so many manifestations of mental illness as the author demonstrates.

This is a haunting book of short stories with a common thread of mental or emotional trauma. To date this is my favorite collection of short stories. Well written, with realistic situations and fleshed-out, sympathetic characters.