Kelly Fordon is so good at telling real stories about real people, regulars folks who face irregular situations. Because she's so skilled at characterizing her protagonists, it's easy to empathize with their trauma, to see myself in their shoes. I Have the Answer isn't always a true statement here--in fact, it almost never is--but it does make for a good book, one I'm glad I spent time with today.

Reading I Have the Answer by Kelly Fordon made me more keen to get to know my neighbor. Because just like me, she is living a life to the best of her ability and her story matters. [. . .] This short story collection is a simmering display of adulthood and the challenges people face around us in silence and in shame. It is incredibly human and eloquently full of emotional truth. Some of the stories force you to stop dead in your tracks and bear witness with your whole, entire body.

This collection is perfectly timed--all of our shared experience in the pandemic makes us crave normalcy, but also validation that we're not the only ones feeling the way we do. I Have the Answer is a perfect fill for that feeling. The stories go through a huge range of experiences, showing that there is a way to get through the every-day difficulties as well as the monumental events. There's so much to be found in the pages of this collection, and thoroughly I enjoyed every page.

A shrewd and probing volume of literary tales.

With this surprising collection of stories set mostly in Michigan, Kelly Fordon takes her place among our most compassionate, insightful, and wry observers of contemporary American life. These are stories of mothers and daughters, wives and widows, rendered in prose that is at once poetic and plainspoken, with genuine heart and a connoisseur's eye for the absurd.

Fordon's stories are a wonderfully complex look at life and how our expectations can bump up against our realities. The stories are sobering and yet, I found myself comforted by them.

Fordon's stories hold up a mirror to our shared humanity, breathing three-dimensional life into her characters through a rotating prism of joy, tragedy, triumph, and heartbreak. This collection joins the ranks of such illustrious contemporary short story writers as Alice Munro, Jeffrey Eugenides, James Salter, and Aimee Bender.

What a beautiful book! As I finished the last of these astute, moving, and often funny stories, I was reminded of something a fellow writer once said to an audience of fans: 'What I want is not so much that you'll get into my book but that my book will get into you.'

The author has a fine touch for breathing life into her characters and making their lives meaningful and real.