Tag: Short Stories

  • Short Story Review: “The Last Grownup” by Allegra Goodman

    (The short story “The Last Grownup” by Allegra Goodman appeared in the February 27th, 2023 issue of The New Yorker.)

    (I will SPOIL the story.)

    Illustration by Geoff McFetridge

    Being a grownup sucks, and being a divorced grownup sucks even more. This is the basic idea behind the short story “The Last Grownup,” by Allegra Goodman, which follows Debra, a divorced grownup woman, as she navigates the official end of her marriage, and the changes that come with an ex-husband, teenaged daughters, and life with a dog.

    There is nothing revolutionary or groundbreaking in this story; just a solid piece of honest “slice of life” fiction. I was struck on how ordinary everyone was in this story. There is no drug addiction, strange sexual desires, angry confrontations, or absurdist flights. This was a story about people you might know, or friends of friends you have heard about. People you would be happy to know that are doing their best to make the divorce work, in the best possible way. You know, those people.

    Goodman structures the story to function and travel in two parallel lines. The surface line is Debra doing all the “right things” or giving the reactions that a good, well-adjusted grownup would give in situations. When Debra informs her parents that her divorce is officially over, her mother asks to keep Debra’s wedding picture up in the house. Though Debra says she’s fine with her mother doing that, you getting the feeling Debra isn’t okay with it, but doesn’t say anything. And this is the second, under current line of the story; Debra not allowing herself to say, or express what she really feels, because that’s not what a grownup would do.

    This structure could have become very tedious, and made Debra a weak and passive protagonist. Yet, Goodman knew to make the “offenses” that come Debra’s way never amount to a true outrage or betrayal. What happens are annoyances. Things one could complain about, but a grownup should just let go.

    Such as the climax of the story. Debra’s ex-husband, Richard, and his girlfriend, Heather, are planning on getting married, but Heather ends up getting pregnant. The three grown-ups gather to discuss the best way to tell the teenage daughters. They decide that Richard and Heather should announce the engagement first, and then a little later, announce the pregnancy. Yet, when the day comes, Richard and Heather announce both developments at the same time. They changed the plan, and Debra says nothing. Even when one of her daughters suspects that Debra was aware ahead of time, Debra side steps answering the question as to not draw attention away from Richard and Heather’s moment.

    What this parallel line structure creates is a wonderful melancholy sadness in Debra. She’s grownup enough to know that complaining would accomplish nothing. And she is grownup enough to recognize that everything is changing and that, she will, eventually, have to change as well. And this sadness is never blatantly expressed, but is shown through Debra’s actions, or lack of actions. The muted responses are so telling, and helps define Debra’s character as a good, decent person.

    I liked that Goodman told a subtle story. A story about adults behaving like well-adjusted adults. But being well-adjusted doesn’t mean that one is drama or conflict free. Being a grownup can also mean that you have to let some things go, so you can continue to move forward.

  • Short Story Review: “My Sad Dead” by Mariana Enriquez

    (The short story “My Sad Dead” by Mariana Enriquez appeared in the February 13th & 20th, 2023 issue of The New Yorker.)

    (Translated, from the Spanish, by Megan McDowell.)

    (It goes without saying, but just saying, SPOLIERS!)

    Photo illustration by Silvia Grav for The New Yorker

    “My Sad Dead” is a finely written story by Mariana Enriquez, and I am sure there are people who will love it greatly, but it fell flat to me. It was the equivalent of being a kid and eating my vegetables with dinner; I know it’s good for me, but I just don’t like it. Part of my hesitation to embrace the story was that the premise of a woman who can speak to dead people and get them to “calm down,” was too close to the idea behind Ghost Whisperer, the Jennifer Love Hewitt television show from the early 2000’s. The other reason is boilerplate basic, as the protagonist doesn’t learn or grow over the course of the story.

    Now, it wasn’t lost on me that the theme, or the central metaphor, was about how middle-class communities cannot divorce themselves from the blight of their societies. That these problems will land on their doorsteps eventually. Which is what happens when a ghost knocks on all the front doors late at night in the neighborhood, repeating his last act of looking for help before he is murdered by the kidnappers he escaped from. All the neighbors ignore him, thinking that he is a thief faking needing aid so as to gain entry to their homes and rob them. In this regard, the story reminded me of the short stories of Haruki Murakami, especially from his book The Elephant Vanishes. Both writers are very good at making their fantastical situations feel believable, and exist in the real world.

    Yet, when “My Sad Dead” concludes with the protagonist staying where she is, I was left feeling hollow, unsatisfied. All the ingredients are here for a satiable conclusion; death, mothers, children, ills of society… But the protagonist goes nowhere. The piece starts with the protagonist wanting to stay in the house with her mother, and ends with her reiterating that she wants to stay in the house with her mother.

    Nothing changes.

  • Short Story Review: “Different People” by Clare Sestanovich

    (The short story “Different People” by Clare Sestanovich appeared in the January 30th, 2023 issue of The New Yorker.)

    (SPOILERS ahead!)

    Illustration by Jillian Tamaki

    I have been trying for some time to come up with a good introduction for this piece, but I have decided that the best way to open this is to say that I really, deeply enjoyed reading “Different People” by Clare Sestanovich. So much so that I just want to start talking about it.

    This was such a smart, honest, tactile story which allowed me to meet and spend time with three characters. This was a story where I enjoyed the journey it was on, and when the conclusion of the piece arrived, I was completely satisfied with how it all tied together. This is the type of story that inspires me to write. It’s about people living their lives, and it is so cleverly constructed that the story never feels forced, or artificially fabricated.

    The story is about Gilly and her parents, Peter and Lisa, their divorce, how all of them change because of the divorce, and how Gilly begins to see her parents as people. But, it’s also about how one should beware of what they wish for. Or, it might also be about the need for security even as the world shifts under one’s feet. Or it might be about how one has to always grow and learn. Maybe it’s about how people hide in plain sight. Maybe. Maybe not. There could still be a level that I haven’t discovered yet.

    This story is divided up into six sections. Each of the sections are paced well, leading to a rise in the action, and then if not ending with a small climax, it concludes with a “button.” And these climax/buttons do a wonderful double duty of enlightening us on the characters in these sections, but also foreshadow upcoming events. Yet, this foreshadowing is so slight and sly that it seamlessly exists with the flow of the story, and doesn’t reek of a plot point.

    Also, I so enjoyed the very smart choices that Sestanovich made to develop her theme. I appreciated that the narrator doesn’t dwell often in the internal thoughts of any character, and allows actions to do the telling. Even a simple choice of having the parents referred to by their first names, which never puts the reader in the frame of thinking of these two people as parents first – Peter and Lisa remain adults. Thus, the reader sees the world as Gilly does – observing these two adults and how they react to this situation. All choices made by a writer that understands the craft of storytelling.

    I have read this story three, maybe four times now; it’s like a song I like listening to on repeat.  I still find these three characters compelling, and hope the best for them, if that makes sense. It’s also nice to be surprised with a well written story.

  • Short Story Review: “Wednesday’s Child” by Yiyun Li

    (The short story “Wednesday’s Child” by Yiyun Li appeared in the January 23rd, 2023 issue of The New Yorker.)

    (I will SPOIL this story.)

    Illustration by Camille Deschiens

    I sometimes need to be reminded that grief is an individual experience. Not only does each person grieve differently, but the grief one feels is also specific to the person who is lost. This is what I think was the point to “Wednesday’s Child” by Yiyun Li, and I have to stress the word think as this story, though it pings some fine authentic truths, ultimately is an uneven exercise.

    This story is about Rosalie, a middle-aged woman who is traveling by train from Amsterdam to Brussels. The train is delayed due to a person having walked onto the tracks, and it so happens that Rosalie’s fifteen-year daughter had committed suicide by laying down on a set of train tracks years earlier. We also learn that Rosalie’s unloving and harsh mother has recently passed away, and this trip to Europe is an act of dealing with Rosalie’s grief. As Rosalie contemplates the life she had with her daughter, a pregnant woman on the train goes into labor, which Rosalie goes to help before the train stops and EMT’s arrive.

    I’m a sucker for a slow, contemplative piece that examines the nature of grief and what we choose to remember and obsess over, as if we could make changes to past events. This is what Rosalie does in the story, and that is when I found the writing to be the most honest. Yet, I had a few issues which stuck up, and caused me to be pulled out of this reality. First was the climax of the piece, which was the pregnant woman going into labor. And of course the woman was going to go into labor because the second the woman walks in the train, you knew she was going to go into labor. The use of this cliché is completely jarring to the quiet, introspective nature of the story. It feels more like a climax was forced in, rather than being organic with the piece. Second was the flatness of Rosalie’s mother, who just plays a single note of awfulness. There is no dimension to this character who, like the climax, seems to exist only to say awful things to thus move Rosalie’s character development forward. Rosalie wrestles with why her daughter killed herself, which is a question that can never fully be answered and is wrapped up fully in her grief. But Rosalie never questions or wonders why her mother was such an awful person to her. I found that difficult to accept as Rosalie’s character questions everything else that happens.

    It’s too bad, because there are some finely written parts of this story that work very well. Grief and loss are never easy to deal with, let alone define and explain to another person. “Wednesday’s Child” gets very close to hitting the mark, but unfortunately, stumbles and falls a little short.

  • Short Story Review: “Matthew Danger” by Dylan Smith

    (The short story “Matthew Danger” by Dylan Smith appeared in Rejection Letters on January 16th, 2023.)

    (There is a chance of Spoilers.)

    I’m a little apprehensive when I start reading a story about a character drinking too much over the course of an evening. Usually that author has a deep reverence for Bukowski of Kerouac, and the drunken work the author creates is just a watered-down version of the aforementioned writers. Yet, I was taken in with “Matthew Danger” by Dylan Smith. Maybe it is just a story about a drunken night in, what I assume is, New York, but the structure Smith uses, the form of the prose, and the format that his theme is in, creates a story that is fresh and interesting.

    Here’s an overly simplified summary: The narrator has it pointed out to him, by his new manager at the restaurant that he works out, that his eyes are “All blurry and always so bloodshot.” An observation that the narrator doesn’t agree with, but as it is the narrator’s birthday, he has the evening off which he goes out into the City. First stopping at a museum to view paintings by Cezanne, then drinking many beers. The narrator encounters his friend Danger, who is a musician, and then later, another friend, Matthew. Other things happen, and I don’t want to ruin all of it, so you should read it.

    What I enjoyed most was Smith’s selective use of short sentences and paragraphs, almost like creating a staccato sound/feeling with the flow of the piece. It made the story feel disjointed, and off ever so slightly – that the world of the narrator doesn’t fit cleanly into the larger universe. Also, the use of recurring lines, about his eyes and his night off for his birthday, created the feeling of being inside the mind of someone who is drunk, with their fixation on an idea that they can’t seem to shake. Especially with the birthday line, as baptism and rebirth work their way into the theme of this story, as does the idea of death, which a nearly empty bar is used to exemplify that part of the theme. I was left with one question, which could be me reading too much into this piece; The title of the story is “Matthew Danger” and the narrator meets up with his friends Matthew and Danger, though Matthew is briefly in the piece and Danger is there pretty much the whole time, but I had this sneaking feeling that these two characters are just a manifestation of the narrator’s id, and don’t actually exist. I have nothing to back that up with, just a feeling I had when I read it.

    This story could have gone off the rails in several places and landed in cliché or caricature, but Smith crafted something that captured the mood and feeling of his narrator that was clear and understandable by an excellent use of form and structure. Well done.