Publishers Weekly
★ 08/28/2023
Sanders excels in this masterly debut collection about a Black extended family and their triumphs, problems, and secrets. In “The Good, Good Men,” brothers Miles and Theo MacHale meet in Washington, D.C., on a mission to drive away their mother Lela’s latest freeloading boyfriend. Elsewhere and often, Sanders retells an event from one story in another, filling in blind spots and offering different versions. “Bird of Paradise” and “La Belle Hottentote” each delve into Lela’s oldest sister Cassandra’s complex relationships with Lela’s twin daughters, Mariolive and Caprice, each of whom she’s looked out for since they were born, Lela’s jazz-musician husband having left her when she was pregnant with them. In the first entry, Cassandra celebrates her appointment as a D.C.–area college provost at a party, where she shrugs off passive-aggressive comments from the older white men who backed her competitor. The second tells the story from the twins’ points of view along with that of two of Cassandra’s other nieces, all of whom attend the party as Cassandra’s guests. There, one of the cousins hooks up with the son of Cassandra’s boss and the others debate family lore about how their grandmother raised the money to open an Atlantic City jazz club back in the 1970s. Sanders takes pleasure in roasting her characters, such as by having finance bro Theo speak like a character on Succession: “I need to maximize face time... to kick off some new stuff I’m doing in the coding space.” She also exhibits great care and love for them, describing their slights, heartaches, and misbehavior with exquisite emotional acuity. This is a winner. (Oct.)Correction: An earlier version of this review misstated the last name of the characters Miles and Theo MacHale and misidentified the location of another character’s college.
From the Publisher
Company is a deftly woven tapestry that scrupulously depicts familial ties and estrangement, richly told with a nuance that allows each character dignity and grace.”—Jonathan Escoffery, The New York Times Book Review
“[Company] captures Black familial relations beyond the frame. . . . Sanders extracts comedy from the formidable situations that erupt in people’s lives—divorce, financial struggle, aging, death and childlessness. Whether chosen or biological, who we consider family can shape how we cope with drama.”—Edna Bonhomme, The Washington Post
“Company is a rich and distinct collection that announces Shannon Sanders as an exciting new voice in contemporary literature.”—Rachel León, Bomb
“[A] rare feat. . . . Sanders weaves the narrative fabric of her stories with the utmost care, creating an intricate and lively look into the many beautiful moments in the lives of one Black family.”—Michael Welch, Chicago Review of Books’ “Must-Read Books of October 2023”
“Sanders’s flair for home life links her work to a tradition of ‘domestic fiction,’ a line traced from Alice Munro and Marilynne Robinson back to Flannery O’Connor and Zora Neale Hurston, whose narrative pace Company frequently evokes. In the work of these women writers, Sanders may have confirmed her own taste for the Southern surreal. Like all family narratives, Company is also a ghost story.”—Kirsten Vega, The Adroit Journal
“Sanders excels in this masterly debut collection about a Black extended family . . . describing their slights, heartaches, and misbehavior with exquisite emotional acuity. This is a winner.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review
Remarkable. . . . The characters throughout are expertly rendered and deeply relatable. . . . Sanders’ stories are unforgettable, making this a strong and promising debut.”—Booklist, starred review
“Subtly crafted. . . . The difficult aspects of negotiating family relationships are gently examined but, more interestingly, respected in their recounting. The complicated circuitry behind family alliances and breakdowns is artfully revealed.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Sanders’ craft is precise, her writing absolutely gorgeous, but it’s this care and love for the flawed humans she’s created that captures our hearts as we read. . . . It’s not hyperbole to say that I laughed, cried, and was completely devastated by the end of this collection. I’d fallen so in love with this world, and with Sanders’ writing, that it was very hard to put Company down.”—Hannah Grieco, Washington City Paper
“Sanders writes with such courage and complexity. She has a masterful grasp of characters, pacing, and plotting. Company is a delectable debut.”—Debutiful's “Most Anticipated Debuts of 2023”
“Secrets are kept, traumas heal and endure. A rich, multigenerational portrait of a Black family.”—Electric Literature, “Must-Read Debut Short Story Collections of 2023”
“Shannon Sanders’s stories simply blew me away. The Collins family and the many folks in their orbit are endlessly fascinating, frustrating, and fun to meet on the page. Company is a riotous, dazzling debut that is as profound as it is entertaining.”—Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
“Assured and incisive, this collection hums with the dark comedy of striving and speaks the inconvenient necessity of affiliation as it unravels the complications of belonging. This clear-eyed debut brims human.”—Tracy O’Neill, author of Quotients
“Company introduces an unforgettable cast of characters who remind us that family can be both wound and salve. Sanders offers sharp and original insight into the intimate politics of race and class and the impossible rules we’ve inherited to navigate them. This is a brilliant and immaculate debut.”—Danielle Evans, author of The Office of Historical Corrections
“Company is a story collection that eats like a novel. Each story feels like a completely different vision of the same majestically sprawling family, as these neurotic high achievers struggle to balance the duties of kinship, social appearances, and honesty to their true selves. Reading Shannon Sanders makes me want to visit home.”—Tony Tulathimutte, author of Private Citizens
“If love is a many-splendored thing, family love is a little more complex: sometimes spluttery, sometimes splintering, often served up with a side of spleen. The extended clan Shannon Sanders conjures in Company is fully alive—and very funny!—recognizable but wholly new, and to read their stories is to get the gift you don’t always get from your own family: the feeling of being seen.”—Will Allison, author of Long Drive Home
APRIL 2024 - AudioFile
Karen Chilton's performance brings listeners close to the lives detailed in this story collection. Sanders's works are linked by the friction that emerges when family members and co-workers encounter each other in various shared spaces, sometimes begrudgingly. The stories revolve around a Black family, primarily in the Washington, DC, area, where a cross section of affluence, university politics, and familial alliances and competitiveness surfaces throughout several generations. As family members encounter each other in offices and kitchens and at social gatherings, they discuss their lives. Chilton's voice enhances the thread among these works. Her performance singularly captures the many characters. S.P.C. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2023-07-26
In 13 stories centered on several generations of the Collinses and their friends and acquaintances, Sanders examines the complex dynamics of a large Black family.
Launching the collection is “The Good, Good Men,” which describes the efforts of Theo and Miles MacHale to protect their mother, Lee Collins, from what they perceive to be yet another in a series of freeloading men (a duty first imposed on them in childhood by their soon-to-be absent father). In “Rule Number One,” Bellamy Lamb recounts the life lessons imparted to her over the years by her dying mother, Suzette Collins, lessons ignored or forgotten or disparaged by Bellamy’s younger sister, Aubrey. Janet, a disappointed and sidelined mother-in-law (and a dean at the university where Cassandra Collins is the provost), mulls over her long-term friendship with “Stephanie fucking Simmons,” a woman who, despite a history of petty differences, provides moral support and comfort in “The Gatekeepers.” The Collins brood is depicted at the beginning of the book in a handwritten family tree, complete with corrections, that serves as a directory to the characters, some of whose given names mature into nicknames as they age. The stories take place over several recent generations and are, primarily, set in the Washington, D.C., region (with some of the younger set venturing to Brooklyn). The passage of time allows Sanders to show slow growth (sometimes of resentment) and the repetition of behavior across generations. Subtly crafted and sometimes ending equivocally, the stories gradually reveal motivations and perspectives that aren’t obvious at first. The difficult aspects of negotiating family relationships are gently examined but, more interestingly, respected in their recounting.
The complicated circuitry behind family alliances and breakdowns is artfully revealed.
