Category: Short Story Review

  • Short Story Review: “Nocturnal Creatures” by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh

    (The short story “Nocturnal Creatures” by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh appeared in the May 5 th, 2025 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Illustration by Anuj Shrestha

    I like this story a lot, so I’m not gun’na fart around with some cute opening here. “Nocturnal Creatures” by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh is a very good story and you should read it.

    Overly Simplified Synopsis: A exterminator meets a single mother and her son while on the job, and they all become involved.

    To start with, Saïd Sayrafiezadeh crafts this story very well. Every time I have read this story, I keep coming to a better appreciation of how all the pieces of this story are laid out, how they interlock and interact. For example, the first section of this story establishes the character of the exterminator, how he views himself and his job. Then going into the next part, when he meets the mother, we are shown the ways she tries to take care of herself and her son which leads us to understand, from the previous section, why the exterminator would identify with her. It’s a little cheesy to say this, but Sayrafiezadeh does an excellent job of “showing” us who these characters are, and not “telling” us. (And somewhere in the world, a creating writing professor just got his wings!) But seriously, each section builds on the previous, creating a momentum in the story with their actions. The narrative never gets mired down in explanations, because Sayrafiezadeh provides a clear understanding of these characters motivations by what they are doing.

    And these are characters that have lived, and maybe they haven’t had the best breaks in life, but they aren’t broken either. There is an optimism to them, but also a melancholy. Are they repeating past mistakes, or trying to make amends for their past? I was fascinated with how the exterminator never said he cared about the mother and her son, but his actions were that of a guy who wants to take care of them. The fact that he gave up his day sleeping time to be with them, wasn’t lost on me. And this was a mother who hadn’t given up on her ambitions, but she knew she had responsibilities which she did her best to uphold. I felt I knew these people, and wanted them to succeed, to carve out the happiness they deserved. But there felt like a little dark cloud hung over their lives, keeping the story grounded in realism, because life’s not always fair, no matter how good intentions attempt to be.

    I wanted it to work out. I wanted them to be happy, but there isn’t a clear, concrete answer to what happens next, and that’s okay. I’m good with the decision that Sayrafiezadeh made to end it the way he did. Maybe it’s a bit of a ploy – yet I would argue that over the course of the story, we have been shown how these characters continually make choices to be together. So why would that change at the end of the story when they reach the crux of their situation?

  • Short Story Review: “Slow Leak” by Lavina Blossom

    (The piece “Slow Leak” by Lavina Blossom was first published in Okay Donkey on March 7th, 2025.)

    I had an acting professor in college tell me that the easiest way to learn about a character was through their simplest actions. Such as, how does your character pick up a glass of water? How do they read the newspaper? How would they answer the phone? This was an idea toward character development that always stuck with me, because mundane ordinary actions can give valuable insight on the disposition of the character. This idea bounced around my head as I read Lavina Blossom’s piece “Slow Leak,” published by Okay Donkey.

    The ordinary action of this story is an older woman, possible elderly or at least getting near it, who is trying to leave and lock her car without forgetting anything. Though the prose is not stream of consciousness, it has an adjacent feel to that form, as the unnamed protagonist floats between obstacle and resolution, which allows her thoughts to drift to related topics in her life. What this creates is a feeling of fluidity of motion, both physical and mental, in the protagonist, which keeps the story moving forward. She looks for her phone, contemplates adding phone numbers to the device, wonders about a slow leak in her tire that her son told her about, and plays with the car key fob, locking and unlocking the doors.

    Then hovering just above the action, thematically, is the feeling of sadness and aging. She has a new phone that her grandson had to show her how to use, friends are passing away, her husband is in a nursing home and doesn’t full recognize her anymore. Her independence is being threatened, and dependence on others, even if it is family, is not an appealing solution for her. Though she doesn’t have to make a decision in this story about her future, she is aware that the day will come and things will have to change.

    Which takes me back to the locking and unlocking of the car doors, a narrative device that Blossom uses again at the end of the story. The protagonist pushes the fob in the darkness, registering the sound the car makes, but unsure which sound means locked or unlocked – reinforcing the idea of indecision. It’s a nice button to the piece, because with these small actions we have come to understand the essence of this character.

  • A Question for the People Who Read My Short Story Reviews

    For those of you who read my short story reviews, and I guess anybody else out there for that matter, are there any short stories that came out in the last six months from either big or small publications, that you would recommend?

    Please leave your suggestions in the comments so we can all enjoy your endorsements.

    Thanks for taking part…

  • Short Story Review: “Marseille” by Ayşegül Savaş

    (The short story “Marseille” by Ayşegül Savaş appeared in the April 7th, 2025 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Illustration by Virginie Morgand

    Old friends are the best friends you can have! There, I said it, and I am willing to die on this completely uncontroversial hill! See, I know that my old friends, some that I have known since grade school, have made my life better, funnier, and have given me perspective in immeasurable ways. Mainly because we have grown older together. Reading “Marseille” by Ayşegül Savaş reminded me of the virtues of having old friends.

    Here’s an Overly Simplistic Synopsis: Amina, who recently had a baby, goes out for a weekend in Marseille with two of her old university friends, Alba and Lisa.

    I try to keep an open mind, and not to jump to conclusions when I start reading a story, but by the time I made it to the third paragraph, and read that this was going to be a story about three old friends going away for a weekend, the cliché and trope sirens started going off in my head. And I can admit that I was totally wrong for doing that. Though, I feel that this “red herring” of a situation was part of Ayşegül Savaş’ plan all along, lulling us in to the story.

    The story’s opening paragraph describes how Amina and her husband have been trying to give each other space and time away from each other, in an attempt to reclaim their lives, “which had been on hold since the baby was born.” So, from the start, the premise of the work is reclaiming one’s self, even after change has occurred. And as we follow Amina and her friends around for these few days, that theme is repeated, in which change is coming, or has already occurred.

    And Ayşegül Savaş handles this theme very smartly. Again, so many times this story could have fallen into the land of middle-aged people tropes, but it never goes there. For one reason, our three characters aren’t that old, perhaps just entering into their thirties. The other way this theme is handled well is that Amina comes into contact with three women, two in the setting of the story and one as a memory, over the stretch of the piece; the first is a new mother on the train out to Marseille, the next is an older woman that explains that desire goes aware after giving birth but will return, the third is a young woman on the ferry ride. It’s as if Amina encounters her present self, her future self, and her past self – these interactions don’t represent warnings of the future, or regrets of the past, but are more like mile posts signaling the changes that happen in life. But what I appreciated most that this was a story about three friends who discover that they have changed by getting older, and still remain friends.

    In the end, “Marseille” is a story about that moment that we all know is coming – that moment when we get the first hint that we aren’t young anymore.

  • Short Story Review: “Hatagaya Lore” by Bryan Washington

    (The short story “Hatagaya Lore” by Bryan Washington appeared in the March 31st, 2025 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Illustration by Kotori Mamata

    When I moved to New York City, a place I always wanted to live in, it took years before it felt like my home. It took even longer for the guy who works at the bodega at the end of the block to acknowledge me at a regular in the neighborhood. (He now calls me “chief” instead of “you.”) But gradually, it started to feel like my home, and now it’s hard to think of it as anything but. Bryan Washington’s “Hatagaya Lore” examines how a place can become your community, and then your indispensable home.

    Here’s an overly simplified synopsis: The narrator and his husband move to Tokyo from Dallas. At first the narrator isn’t sure how to fit in, but soon finds his community, which leads to changes and growth.

    What I loved about Bryan Washington’s story is how he intersects community and intimacy, and the connections that are created from it. The narrator goes out and finds a community that he can connect to that sustains him as he journey in Japan. Yet, there is also a need in the narrator for more of an intimate connection with people, which isn’t always sexual, but is necessary to keep the narrator grounded, as the person he is growing into is beginning to flourish. Also, I liked Washington’s choice to have the narrator tells us, ever so briefly, about other relationships the he has had over the years in this story, but aren’t explained in detail, thus creating a feeling of trust and confidence between the narrator and us the reader; that we are only being told what is most important to the narrator, and nothing superfluous. It’s as if we are being added into the narrator’s community. Finally, I commend that the climax of this story is not the narrator “realizing” something profound, but is the narrator listening and observing.

    Bryan Washington’s writing skills are just phenomenal. He is one of my favorite “less is more” writers out there. Spartan is a fair description of how he describes most things in this story, but I am never left wanting for more, or feeling that details are missing. I appreciated how subtly the disillusion of the marriage was shown. In this story, a scene of their breakup isn’t needed, but showing that moment when the trust between the couple, that break in emotional intimacy, spoke volumes about the state of their relationship. And this story is peppered with moments like that, where there is a breath and space in this writing that allows weight to be infused in these situations.

    I’m a fan of Bryan Washington, and I can admit that I might not be the most objective person when it comes to evaluating this story, but eh… It’s a good story all around. I enjoyed being with these characters, seeing them interact, and watching them grow and find their place in the world. Some homes are made, while others are discovered.