(The short story “The Complete,” by Gabriel Smith appeared in Issue 6, of The Drift.)
At the start of the pandemic, my wife was on one of those huge group chats with her friends, all attempting to use Zoom, and recreate some sense of normal human connection. This was probably April or May 2020. Most of my wife’s friends are in the creative fields; writers, actors, directors, poets. My wife told me later, that on one of those early calls, they all started discussing how they thought the pandemic was going to be portrayed in movies, TV, theatre, novels, and so on. Some thought it would usher in a new version of hyper-realism, another group thought it would be treated how 9/11 was. I don’t know, but since those early days, it feels like every couple of months, someone writes something asking, “How will the story of COVID be told?”
Gabriel Smith’s story, “The Complete,” is the first work of fiction I have read that has tried to take a crack at it. I don’t think I could give a quick summary, or even a long one, for this story. It takes place in London, sort of. It’s about a writer, kind of. And COVID is happening. While the story doesn’t have a formal plot, it does have atmosphere, mood, and an almost tangible ethereal presence. Oh, and a real good sense of humor.
Two main things struck me with the story. First, I felt like someone captured what my brain went through during the dark days of the pandemic. How my imagination would wander and drift, break things apart and put them back together. I had so much time to think about everything that had ever happened to me, and way too much time to think about the end of the world. Second, the whole piece worked in this wonderful staccato rhythm, with each section of the story coming in, then cutting to another part, then another cut. This method of storytelling wasn’t new to me, I have read other attempts of this style, and I was aware that at some point all of these tangents would tie together. But the fun wasn’t waiting to see if it came together; The fun was watching how it came together. Because I can see how someone might complain that this story is all style and no substance, yet I would argue, strongly, that the substance, the weight of this story, was in the style which captured a still undefinable time.
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