"Kirstin Allio’s stories seduce us with voluptuous detail, sly wit, and unexpected, evocative imagery. In particular I love when she gives us the complex inner life of an otherwise silent, almost invisible woman. A powerful and moving collection from a mesmerizingly lyrical and wonderfully observant writer."
—Dana Spiotta, author of Innocents and Others
"Kirstin Allio writes beautiful, intimate stories that speak directly into your ear. There's nothing I want more out of a story. These stories are strange in the way that life is strange, that is: essentially.“
—Peter Orner, author of Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge and Love and Shame and Love
“Reminiscent of Alice Munro…both writers can fit novel-like stories into fewer than 30 pages, flashing between years past and present without a hiccup. There is also a similar economy of language that nevertheless provides a world of imagery… Allio knows what she’s doing. The way she works her way into and out of her plots is skillful, but it’s the writing itself, so deceptively easy at times, that is truly breathtaking.”
—Ilana Masad, LA Times
“In its perfect inevitability, the shape of a fairy tale… marvels of craft and insight.”
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“Spiked with rich yet compressed language, these thematically linked stories should win Allio wide notice among literary-fiction readers. Fans of Alice Munro and Lucia Berlin will find much to admire here.”
—Booklist, starred review
“Women are the life force of every story… Clothed, Female Figure brings the diversity of feminism’s constituents into stark relief. Allio’s greatest gift is for re-writing the ‘same’ domestic world from different vantage points. With every story, she urges us to both imagine other people’s life experiences and remember that we can’t. Social progress, she suggests, depends on a self-conscious attention to what we do and don’t have in common: you don’t know what you don’t know.”
—Gillie Collins, Full Stop
“The debut short story collection by National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree Allio presents eloquent and sophisticated investigations into the complex relationships between mothers and daughters.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Allio's prose is lush with imagery, and the story lines are revealed obliquely, making even domestic dramas profound and mysterious.”
—Library Journal
"A sophisticated, empathetic chronicle of mostly blue-collar women with shades of Lucia Berlin—these are wonderfully dark, subtle, insightful stories that evade predictability and easy answers."
—J. Ryan Stradal, author of Kitchens of the Great Midwest
"I hope it makes sense to say that I found this collection to be quietly astonishing. One by one Allio's clean yet stunning sentences gather momentum and build into stories with a uniquely emotional impact every time. Several of my favorite writers came to mind as I read, but it would be a disservice to compare her to anyone: Allio's is an original voice, and this is an outstanding collection."
—Elizabeth Crane, author of The History of Great Things
“I found myself entranced, challenged, embraced by the complex women that fill Allio's collection. The characters pull you in tight to whisper warnings unblemished by apology. The language and imagery are skin tight, but your greatest reward comes only if you look these stories in the eye.”
—Jac Jemc, author of My Only Wife
"In Kirstin Allio’s perfectly structured Clothed, Female Figure, she presents a tale of a Russian nanny’s deliberately distant relationship with her charges. As we read from one character’s letter that “…things used to be so original. Now, everything, absolutely everything, is a repeat,” the author disproves the point with this very story, in which a spare but unusual narrative is juxtaposed with the passion of a young woman’s letters that unwittingly draw out the nanny’s deeply-contained and stunning secret."
—Laura Furman, for The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2010