Tag: Friendship

  • Short Story Review: “Beyond Imagining” by Lore Segal

    (The short story “Beyond Imagining” by Lore Segal appeared in the June 10th, 2024 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Illustration by Bénédicte Muller

    A few years before my mother passed away, we got into a conversation about getting older. She was around 70 years old at this time, and happily enjoying her life in retirement, as well as being the matriarch of our family, but she especially enjoyed being a grandmother. “Is it all what you hoped it would be?” I asked her, to which she responded, “When I got married (at 19) I never thought I would live past forty. This is all new to me.” My mother could be dry, but at the time, I wasn’t sure what to make of her answer. Since her passing, and my own aging, I have come to understand that you can’t get excited for something you aren’t able to imagine.

    Lore Segal’s “Beyond Imagining” posed this thought early in the first section, when the character Bridget, speaking about death states, “I think that the reason I think I won’t mind being dead is that I can’t imagine it, and I don’t think we know how to believe what we aren’t able to imagine.” This idea, this through line, plays role in the four sections of this story, which follow a circle of elderly women friends in New York, as they handle, deal, and accept their current lives.

    I know that the above description is, maybe, an unfair simplification of this piece. The story exudes a wonderful melancholy as it lets us experience the world of these women. But it also has a very delicate touch, showing the importance and power of their friendships, how these relationships at this point in their lives sustains them, and gives them strength to deal with issues and discoveries they did not anticipate. Though this piece is not very long, the characters intertwin in each other’s sections, and I found this structure added a depth of authenticity to the friendships.

    When I finished reading this story, I wanted to hug these ladies. I wanted to hold their hand, like a doting son would, and listen to them talk. But the emotional power of this story is that these are the conversations these friends have when it is only them around. These aren’t salacious or confessionary conversations, but conversations friends have when the sharing of experience is the intimacy. It’s the conversation between friends that can make what one can’t imagine, into something that can be believed.

  • Personal Review: CRUNCH and CLASH by Kayla Miller

    (I will SPOIL these two books!!! You have been warned!!!)

    I’m trying to be a good parent to my daughter. Besides teaching her to love the Chicago Cubs, and to despise the Philadelphia Eagles, I also want to instill in her the love of books and reading. I at least know enough not to force her to read, which would make it feel like a chore. What I do is suggest we read together, or I take her to the library on rainy days, and I try to set the example of reading books around the home. About two months ago, thanks in large part to our local library’s librarians (Support your local libraries, folks!) the kid found a series of tween graphic novels by the author Kayla Miller, that she has become a huge fan of. So much so, that for the kid’s birthday, we got her to complete series of Miller’s books.

    Full disclosure; I am not a tween graphic novel aficionado, nor do I have a deep wealth of knowledge of this genre, as Kayla Miller’s books are the first tween graphic novels I have read. Well, my daughter read them to me, but I was present and active in the storytelling. I want to speak of two of the novels in particular; CRUNCH and CLASH. (I am aware that these were read out of order. That was not my decision, it was the kid’s, and hopefully, we will finish the other books in the series.) For a broad outline here, the books revolve around Olive, a sixth grader who lives in a suburb with her mom and younger brother. CRUNCH has to do with Olive wanting to try as many new things as possible, guitar lessons, joining a scouting group, student council, and wanting to make a movie. CLASH is about Olive trying to be friends with a new girl in school, and no matter how hard Olive tries, they don’t seem to get along, which is complicated by the fact that Olive and the new girl are friends with the same people.

    My daughter and I started reading CRUNCH, and it became very clear why my kid loved these books; it reinforces her world view. Olive goes to school in a place that is filled with a wide range of diversity, which is just like the school my daughter attends. Also, though a little Pollyanna, all the kids in CRUNCH get along, or if there is a conflict, after a period of introspection or discussion, the kids are able to talk it out and come and solve the problem. What I really liked about CRUNCH, which my kid completely got, was that the “bad guy” in the story was Olive, who over stretched herself with too many commitments. It wasn’t until Olive learned to say no, politely, to one friend, and ask for help from others, that her life returned to a sense of balance.

    When we read CLASH next, this was the book made me impressed with Kayla Miller’s talent. As I said before, this book is about Olive trying to be friends with someone, a girl named Nat, who doesn’t want to be friends with her. Olive tries several different ways to be friendly to Nat, which is rebuffed every time, and often met with passive-aggressive backhanded compliments. These interaction sap Olive’s confidence, and challenge her worldview which is that everyone can be friends. There is a wonderful bit of complication as Olive’s mother and aunt, two very strong role models for Olive, disagree on how to handle the situation. The book concludes with making two very important points; First, we learn that Nat’s home life is not been the easiest, which reminds us that sometimes we don’t know the pressure and stress others are under; Second, Nat and Olive don’t become best friends, as they come to an understanding to be respectful to each other. What I felt when we started reading this book was that the ending was going to be about hand holding, and how we worked out our problems, and we are bestfriends like Tango and Cash, or Falcon and the Winter Soldier. No, what Miller gave us fit completely, and is true and honest to this world that she created – Nat and Olive don’t like each other and they won’t be bestfriends, but since they move in the same friend circles they had to find a way to co-exist. (Now, that’s a lesson a whole bunch of people need to learn.) What made that even better, is that my daughter related to that, as we talked about the same situation in her school. We had a long conversation about how you might not be friends with someone, but you have to respect who they are.

    These books are great, and I love reading them with my kid. Miller does very unique job of creating a place for her stories where the outside world is present and on the edges of the story, but never gets bogged down by adult perspectives, keeping the focus on these six graders, and their problems. Sure, puberty, and the wonderful/awful life of teenagers is just around the corner for all of these characters, but that corner is still a little ways off. In this place, these tweens are thoughtful, honest, and doing their best to solve their own issues, but never out of the sight of a parent. These are delightful books, and Kayla Miller has a very deft hand at storytelling, which has made all of us look forward to her next graphic novel.

  • Short Story Review: “Take Half, Leave Half” by Thomas McGuane

    (The short story “Take Half, Leave Half” by Thomas McGuane appeared in the October 10th, 2022 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Photograph by Kurt Markus

    (I might SPOIL IT. Just be aware.)

    I like a western. Maybe it’s because I grew up in Texas, or maybe it’s because a good western is like good sci-fi; it is a vehicle of metaphor. In the right hands, these genres can give sharp insights into human nature. We could go down an English lit route, bust out our I.A. Richards and discuss metaphor and symbolism, but I honestly think that would miss the point of “Take Half, Leave Half” by Thomas McGuane; The story is short, compact, and visceral.

    The story is about two childhood friends from Montana who, after graduating high school, work odd jobs every summer all over the west. This summer they landed in Oklahoma on an old ranch run by an even older man. That’s the plot anyway, but the story goes into these two friends’ lives and what has brought them to where they are in life. And it paints the world they live in with the smells of leather, and of horses, and the dust from the arid, hot summer. You can feel this story when you read it, which is an admirable feat by the writer. I was lulled into the world that these two characters lived in.

    And when the climax occurred, I was honestly disappointed that it had happened. Not that the climax was disappointing, but because I don’t get to be in the world of these two characters anymore, which sounds very cliché to say. What I enjoyed reading was about the friendship between these two very different guys, and also what was and wasn’t said between them. (The short is sparse on dialogue and heavy on narration.) Then, when the final paragraph rolls out, I saw it as identifying that this story contain two worlds; one was the world that these two friends occupied, and the other was everybody else looking in. But we, the reader, got to be on the inside, to see who they really were. That was a well-placed button for the story, that I admire McGuane for doing, because he let us be in on the secret.

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