Tag: #Fiction

  • Short Story Review: “Five Bridges” by Colm Tóibín

    (The short story “Five Bridges” by Colm Tóibín appeared in the March 10th, 2025 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Photograph by Todd Hido for The New Yorker

    Sometimes when I start reading a short story, in the back of my mind, I start rooting for it. You know, cheering it on, hoping that the story succeeds. Like wishing that your favorite ballplayer hits a homerun when they’re at the plate. So you see, I found myself really pulling for Colm Tóibín’s “Five Bridges” to do well, and accomplish its goals.

    Here’s an overly simplified synopsis: Paul, an Irish guy who has been living in the United States illegally for over thirty years, has decided to move back to Ireland, but in so doing, that will mean he will have to leave his daughter, whom he fathered with woman he never married. But before he leaves, his daughter wants Paul, the mother and the mother’s husband, to all hike Mount Tam which is outside of San Francisco.

    It all starts well. The first section is about Paul hiking with his daughter, Geraldine, and then she tells him her idea about everyone hiking together to Mount Tam. Then at a very leisurely pace, we learn about the strained relationship Paul has with Geraldine’s mother, Sandra. We learn about Paul’s profession as an unlicensed plumber, his socks filled with cash, and his recovery over his alcoholism. Then the story takes a rather hard right turn with the introduction of Paul’s friend Kirwan, another Irishman, and the semi support group Kirwan creates for other single Irishmen living in the Bay Area. Then the story shifts back to Paul, Geraldine, Sandra and her husband, Stan, as the hike up the mount. I’ll leave it there as to not ruin the ending.

    As you can see, Tóibín layers his story, and generally it all works together smoothly, with the exception of that hard-right turn with Kirwan. Also, several themes play under the surface here; fathers and daughters, blended families, immigration, culture clashes, redemption, penance… And as the story went on, and I got closer and closer to the final page, that’s when I started hoping and rooting for this story to all pull together.

    I was enjoying what I was reading, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that nothing was getting it’s full due time to resolve itself. When I encounter stories that feel like this, it’s hard for me to shake the feeling that the piece needs a larger format (a novel) to explore the characters, motivations and themes. I wouldn’t go as far to say I was disappointed with the story; more like I was pulling for it, and wanted to it work.

  • Short Story Review: “Keuka Lake” by Joseph O’Neill

    (The short story “Keuka Lake” by Joseph O’Neill appeared in the March 3rd, 2025 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Photograph by Annie Collinge for The New Yorker

    I don’t know if you know this, but grief is a really popular theme for short stories. (That and bad relationships with parents, but that’s a story for another day.) Grief lends itself easily to the dramatic, and is also individualistic, and it can also be shocking as to what emotions and memories it will bring up. Everyone grieves differently, and maybe I was a little flippant at the start of this, because maybe my past grief still makes me uncomfortable.  Parts of “Keuka Lake” tapped on my past grief, but in the end Joseph O’Neill’s story meandered, leaving an unsteady feeling to the work.

    The story starts off with a banger of a first paragraph, letting us know that Nadia, the protagonist, has been involved with someone from a teenager to the day she became a widower at fifty-four. Her husband was killed in a car crash near a town in the Finger Lakes, and Nadia never knew why her husband was driving up there. And then the story just flutters about. We follow Nadia to a visit to her sister on Montreal, and then an early return to the States, where she gets a speeding ticket. She then looks up a former boyfriend, who is a lawyer, to take care of the ticket, and though she never sees the lawyer, Nadia engages his secretary to look into the reasons why her husband was in the Finger Lakes.

    I say that the story “meanders” and “flutters” because the story never feels like it takes anyone seriously. The tone that is taken towards everyone that isn’t Nadia is condescending and rather dismissive. I understand that Nadia is lost without her husband, and she isn’t sure how to react or behave normally, as everything has a level of annoyance to her. But at the end of the story, I can’t say conclusively that Nadia learned anything. There is no catharsis, or release, or even a realization of anything. I believe the last section of the story was to provide that, but it felt too random and disjointed, though I understood that Keuka Lake is near the town where Nadia’s husband was killed, and I guess we are all the fish in our grief.

  • Short Story Review – “Séance at the Dinner Party” by Tori Palmore

    (The flash piece “Séance at the Dinner Party” by Tori Palmore first appeared at Rejection Letters on November 27th, 2024.)

    Families can suck, and in literature, this is fertile ground for inspiration which has been plowed many times over, and will forever produce material that will be harvested for our consumption. As I get older, family dramas have become more fascinating to me, and Tori Palmore’s “Séance at the Dinner Party” is a absorbing stream of consciousness entry into the field.

    The narrator takes us through their thoughts/experience/emotions at this family gathering, I believe it is Thanksgiving. There is the subtext of death and the loss of a sibling, perhaps the narrator’s safety at these gatherings, and the repetitive “Brother is Dead” adds a staccato rhythm to the prose, keeping the piece unsettled. I appreciated Palmore’s use of short sentences to build tension and keep the emotions and reactions moving forward. The piece never feels like it can stop, that it will perpetually play over and over again, not only in the narrator’s life, but also in the mind, even when they leave this dinner party of family. How the narrator is uncomfortable with their family, how they don’t feel accepted, to the point of micro aggressions signaling that they are not fully accepted. Yet the narrator keeps their rage, even grief, in check. Though the narrator does escape this evening with their family, the ironic knowledge is that this event will repeat itself again.

    Palmore’s “Séance at the Dinner Party” is the type of flash fiction I look forward to reading. It is direct, clear, and puts me in a moment or emotional state that I can relate to, or learn from. And in the piece, Palmore also creates a moment that also feels as if it exists outside of time, which adds to the resonance of the story.

  • BEST of 2024: Most Read Post over 2024 – Short Story Review: “The Face in the Mirror” by Mohsin Hamid

    ( This post was written back in May of 2022, but for some reason, and I am not complaining, Mohsin Hamid’s short story review had the highest view count for 2024. It’s a very good story so I understand why people are still talking about it.)

    Short Story Review: “The Face in the Mirror” by Mohsin Hamid

    (The short story “The Face in the Mirror” by Mohsin Hamid appeared in the May 16th, 2022 issue of The New Yorker.)

    (This story will be Spoiled!)

    I didn’t know I had been waiting for a story, but “The Face in the Mirror” by Mohsin Hamid was the story I had been waiting for. I thought I knew what I was getting, then I was surprised, then I felt ashamed that I had judged it, only to again think I knew where this story was going, only to arrive at an ending that was conclusive, but also left me pleasantly wondering what all of this meant. I love that feeling. It reminds me of being in a college English class, and we have just finished reading a story that we are all jazzed up about, and we can’t wait to discuss it, to see if someone else saw it the same way that I did.

    The story is about a white man, Anders, who wakes up one day to find that his skin color has changed to brown. Right off the bat, I thought I was about to get a modern retelling of Kafka’s “Metamorphosis.” Anders soon learns that this change is affecting other people in his city. Slowly, tensions start growing in this city. Anders goes to see his father, who has not changed and is still white. We learn that the father and Anders have a strained relationship, neither really coming to understand the other. Where the father was a construction foreman, a physically tough man, Anders never lived up to that standard. Though the father doesn’t understand or recognize his son, the father still loves and attempts to protect his child, by giving Anders a rifle to protect himself. Soon, society begins to break apart; militias form, people who have changed are now evicted, violence is everywhere. Anders has a confrontation at his apartment, an attempt to evict him, and though he stands his ground, he knows he has to leave. The only safe place is his father’s home, where he goes, and the two of them hole up together. Soon, it is clear that the father is dying, and Anders sees to it that he takes care of his father to the end. And at the funeral, the father is the only white person left, as all of the people attending are now brown skinned.

    First of all, much respect to Hamid for writing a story that was not easy to predict where it was going. Always a good sign. Second, there is so much to unpack. Was this a story about race? Clearly it was. Was this a story about how the paternal generation comes to not recognize and understand their children’s generation? Yes, that is also true. I think it was also about loving unconditionally. It was all of that, and it was great. I also like that after Anders goes through this change, society comes out on the other side, and everything starts to return back to normal. There was a menace in this story, a tension that I felt was going to explode, but the fact that it didn’t played well into the theme of the story. There were all of these things happening, which was bringing up questions in my mind, asking if this is how society would react to a change like that, or is our current society reacting this way because a great change is under way?

    I don’t know, but it is fun and challenging to ask and ponder these questions.

    But all of it was pulled together and held tightly by Hamid’s writing. His word choice, the flow of the sentences, and the use of repetition of a phrase in a sentence; it was enjoyable just to read this prose. I am now a fan of Mohsin Hamid. I feel like he was a friend, gently nudging me to ask questions, and look a little closer at the world around me.

    (Say, don’t forget to like this post, or share it, or leave a comment. I got bills to pay, you know.)

  • Short Story Review: “Between the Shadow and the Soul” by Lauren Groff

    (The short story “Between the Shadow and the Soul” by Lauren Groff appeared in the December 16th, 2024 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Photograph by Xuebing Du for The New Yorker

    Sometimes when I read a short story, in my mind I can hear the gears of the story’s mechanics grinding away, snapping into place, moving it all forward, and churning out the work of fiction. Other times, the author’s machinations are as silent as an evening breeze in summer, but still felt and causing an impact. Then Lauren Groff creates the story “Between the Shadow and the Soul” where I can feel the mechanics of the piece, but is written so well, with such character, flavor, and so wonderfully brutally honest in regard to couplehood, that it left me feeling better having gone on this journey with these characters.

    What we have is a story about Willie and Eliza, but really about Eliza, a couple that has been together for over twenty-five plus years in upstate New York. They live in an old home they purchased right after they got married, and have spent those years fixing up. Now, with Eliza at fifty, she has reached retirement age from her job at the Post Office, and decided to act upon it. But retirement doesn’t suit her, and with Willie’s encouragement, and occasional participation, Eliza begins to explore life through local arts classes, pilates, and especially a gardening class. (Now, go read the story.)

    When I said that I could feel the mechanics of this story, what I meant by that was how the craft and structure of this story was very close to the surface. When the joke about kids was made, I knew that was coming back into play. The couple Eliza discovered having sex at the boathouse; there’s another meaning there. The fact that Willie and Eliza’s relationship started clandestinely; oh, you that this was foreshadowing something to come. Yet, I can also say this story did take a winding path which never felt superfluous. At all times, the story felt purposeful and controlled by a steady hand.

    That deft touch was never more on display than Eliza’s growth over the course of the story. She is such a complex and detailed character. There are many authentic pieces to her, but what I connected with most was how “retirement” wasn’t a reward but a prison for Eliza; she is the type of person who works at life, and losing that work from her job, in addition to the loss of working on their home, she found herself lost. Such a clear and easy situation to understand and grasp as to why it would bring about her motivation in the next part of the story. But I would also be remiss not to touch on the relationship between Eliza and Willie, and their level of intimacy. Not just sexual intimacy, but the intimacy of knowing your partner after so many years, and knowing when they are hurting, and when they are hiding. And I loved how they both grew and moved forward in this story, and one of the conflicts was how they had to learn and adjust to loving this new person.

    Like all good stories, I am leaving out so much, and I know if I were to read it again, I would discover new depths and details to Eliza and her life with Willie. To have a story about growth and discovering passion, and also to be a story where neither member of the couple is the “bad guy,” left the whole piece feeling refreshing, alive, and honest.