Kristen Roupenian’s “Cat Person” tops the list of our most-read short stories of 2017. Photograph by Elisa Roupenian Toha

In the midst of a record-breaking response to last week’s short story, “Cat Person,” by Kristen Roupenian, who was making her début in our pages, we thought it would be a good time to take a look back at the year and see which pieces of fiction most excited readers in 2017. Of the five stories that drew the most readers online, four were written by women—Roupenian, Samantha Hunt, Zadie Smith, and Curtis Sittenfeld—and one by a man, F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Roupenian’s story of a flirtation conducted mostly by text, which leads to a catastrophically bad date, slyly skewers the false intimacy of electronic communication, the mercurial nature of sexual attraction, and a young woman’s reluctance to just say no. Hunt’s “A Love Story,” an excoriating yet lyrical take on our cultural views of motherhood and marriage, considers how many identities one person can contain. In “Crazy They Call Me,” Smith inhabits the late Billie Holiday and explores the inherent loneliness of performance. In Sittenfeld’s “The Prairie Wife,” a story that takes on the fluidity of sexual orientation and the sometimes malevolent influence of social media, the protagonist becomes obsessed with a former lover who has reinvented herself as a television personality. And Fitzgerald’s “The I.O.U.,” a previously unpublished story from 1920, is a sharp comic satire about the vagaries of the publishing industry—of his time, if not ours.

If you haven’t already read these, find out what readers are talking—and tweeting—about!

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“Cat Person,” by Kristen Roupenian

“It was a terrible kiss, shockingly bad; Margot had trouble believing that a grown man could possibly be so bad at kissing.” Read more.

“The I.O.U.,” by F. Scott Fitzgerald

A previously unpublished short story from 1920. Read more.

“A Love Story,” by Samantha Hunt

“The list of potential reasons that my husband and I no longer have sex wakes me up at night. If I’m not already awake thinking about the coyotes.” Read more.

“Crazy They Call Me,” by Zadie Smith

“Not only is there no more Eleanora, there isn’t any Billie, either. There is only Lady Day.” Read more.

“The Prairie Wife,” by Curtis Sittenfeld

“Kirsten’s commute is when she really focusses on whether she has the power to destroy Lucy Headrick’s life.” Read more.