Tag: Short Story Review

  • BEST OF 2022: Short Story Review of “What the Forest Remembers” by Jennifer Egan

    (The short story, “What the Forest Remember” by Jennifer Egan, appeared in the January 3rd & 10th, 2022 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Why did our parents do the things that they did? Why did my dad stop buying sports cars in the 70’s and then start buying station wagons? I can guess, which is that he started a family, and two door sports cars just aren’t practical for a growing family. That’s a logical answer, and most likely correct, but there is an outside chance it could be something else. Do I want to know his thought process as to why he made this decision when it came to cars? No. I want to believe he made that decision because he loved his family and it was the right thing to do. I would hate to know that he was guilted by my mother to give up his sports car for a station wagon, and he spent the rest of his life resenting her and his kids. It’s not a pleasant thought, but it is possible.

    I feel that was what Jennifer Egan was trying to tackle with her short story, “What the Forest Remembers,” which is a fun read. She tells the story of four men, three of which who are married with families, all living around the San Francisco area in 1965, who go on a trip to the wilderness around Eureka, CA. The point of the trip is to visit a marijuana farm/commune, experiment with grass, and have a good weekend. The crazy right turn of this story is that the narrator, Charlie, who is the daughter of Lou, one of the four men going on the trip, has access to the memories of her father, the rest of the men, and even some of the people at the commune. This is because Charlie exists in the near future where people have uploaded their memories into a Collective Consciousness, and thereby, one can review memories and thoughts of the past. It was a bit of a jarring twist, but it had a slight Vonnegut feel to it, so I went with it. I don’t want to spoil the story, but this trip plays an important role in the three married men’s lives.

    I had to read this story twice, because the first time through it, I just felt like I had missed something. The story and the writing is very, I think, charming is the best way to describe it, but the ending left me feeling unsatisfied. I sat on it for a day, and then decided I needed to take another crack at it. The second time through, I began to pick up on a little of the nuance of disappointment Charlie has with her father, which I found at odds with the concept of the story. If the premise is that Charlie can see and hear her father’s thoughts and memories, then there shouldn’t be any vagueness on her understanding of his intention and thought process of those decisions. There are moments and lines that are dropped by Charlie about her father’s thoughts towards her, that you would believe would be difficult for her to hear, but these thoughts are treated like adjectives in describing a person’s hair color. In fact, at one point in the story, Charlie rhetorically asks what should be done with this overload of information that comes from viewing a person’s memories? Which causes Charlie to state, “Not every story needs to be told.”

  • BEST OF 2022: Short Story Review of “Long Distance,” by Aysegul Savas

    (The short story “Long Distance,” by Aysegul Savas, appeared in the January 31st, 2022 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Sometimes it’s nice to read a love story. And sometimes it’s also nice to read a love story about “relationships where you get jerked around,” to quote the Fortune Teller from The Simpsons. When it came to Aysegul Savas’ story “Long Distance,” it’s a love story about two people who try not to jerk each other around, but might be jerking each other around.

    This was a story that seemed like it could have been published in Collier’s back in the 50’s, as it sort of had the casualness of a Post-War world where American’s came and went in Europe, like visiting a farm upstate – free of the burdens the rest of the world is dealing with. The story is basically about Lea, a student doing a semester of research in Rome, and her male gentleman friend (I don’t think he is ever referred to as a boyfriend) Leo, coming to visit her from California. Their relationship is new, starting just before she left for Rome, and has consisted of phone calls and emails. There is a large anticipation on Lea’s part, and when Leo arrives, the two never seems to line up their intentions, especially when it comes to a story about an elderly woman Leo met on his flight to Rome.

    I am a fan of the short story with subtle and small events that have impactful ramifications to character’s lives, even to the point where the reader understands the importance though the characters may not. That’s what I think this story was aiming for, and I feel it succeeded at that goal. I understood Lea’s high expectations for Leo’s visit, and how when each miscommunication occurs, she feels more insecure that the trip will be a failure. The story is from her point of view, as she is the only character we get internal thoughts from, so we have to take Leo’s words and actions, and figure out what is his truth. I like that Savas structured his story in that way, as it doesn’t make Leo’s true intentions the focus, but rather Lea’s decision on what she thinks is Leo’s true intention are. For that reason, I feel the story stuck its landing.

  • Short Story Review: “Mitzvah” by Etgar Keret

    (The short story “Mitzvah” by Etgar Keret appeared in the June 27th, 2022 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Illustration by Jason Fulford and Tamara Shopsin

    (Heads up! SPOILERS!)

    Well… “Mitzvah” was a very short story. I know that Etgar Keret is famous for his very short short stories, and this is one of them, alright. I understand his popularity. His writing is sharp, even crisp, and direct. He doesn’t fart around and gets right to the point. Sadly, I found the point predictable and the characters flat.

    We meet three characters right off the bat, who all feel like they came from the works of Irvine Welsh; the guy who had a good drug experience, the guy who wants to try and have a drug experience, and the gross guy who sells them the drugs, but who doesn’t like to think of himself as a drug dealer but is a drug dealer. Good drug guy once got high and picked up a woman tourist at the beach, and has convinced new drug guy that if he gets high he can do the same. They take their drugs and head to the beach, but along the way they are stopped by an older man in front of a synagogue. The older man is looking for one more person to have ten men for the minyan. Good drug guy says no and leaves, while new drug guy agrees to take part. The drugs kick in, and new drug guys leaves the synagogue after completing the minyan, heads to the beach, tries to pick up a girl, but her boyfriend beats him unconscious. When new drug guy comes to, the girl is sitting next to him on the beach waiting for the ambulance to arrive. New drug guy thinks that God has blessed him with the girl for completing the minyan.

    The mechanics of a well-made short story are all there. It hits all the notes that are needed to get to its climax and resolution. Yet, it still felt incomplete. I sort of want to say that the story was looking for an “O. Henry” styled twist ending, but it’s not that, but it’s not irony either. I go back to the Welsh comparison, as the story is about drugs, sex, violence, as if there is an overarching morality to it all. I just don’t know, which leads me to conclude that its intention is not clear, which left me feeling that it didn’t work.

    (You know the drill. If you enjoyed what you read, please take a moment to like, share, and/or comment.)

  • Short Story Review: “HOUYHNHNM” by André Alexis

    (The short story “HOUYHNHNM” by André Alexis, appeared in the June 20th, 2022 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Photograph by Vanessa Winship

    (I’ll probably SPOIL it)

    Did you ever have a simple turkey sandwich but for whatever reason, was just amazing? Like, it’s made up of all the same simple ingredients that you have in your house, but somehow the person in the kitchen put it together in a way that somehow was spot on. Man, it’s just a turkey sandwich, but it’s great turkey sandwich.

    I mean no disrespect, but that is exactly what “HOUYHNHNM” by André Alexis was to me. The title of the story is taken from the name of a race of fictional intelligent horses from Gulliver’s Travels. The story is told by the adult son of a well to do but modest doctor who is all scientific logic, and buys a horse. This isn’t his first horse he’s owned, but soon a special bond is formed between the doctor and the horse, to the point where the doctor spends all of his free time with the horse; walking, reading to him, talking to him. It even gets to the point to where the doctor builds the horse a special barn to live in. Suddenly, the doctor passes, and the son takes on the responsibility of caring for the horse, only to find that the horse can speak. The son realizes why his father spent so much time with the animal, and also the son begins to do the same things that his father did when he was attending the horse.

    I used the metaphor of the simple ingredients here because nothing in this story took me by surprise. I knew where it was going, I saw all the pieces, I knew was Alexis was going to build. I knew that with the son now spending time with the horse, he was gaining a deeper understand of who his father was. And when the horse’s decline set in, I also knew that the story was alluding to having a parent who is succumbing to dementia, and the pain that can cause when the loved one soon no longer recognizes you. Even with that said, it was an effective story – honest and authentic. Not a word seemed false or forced. The title of the piece was clearly there to say to the reader that this horse was real, and not a figment of the narrator’s imagination, though, that was the only aspect of the story that I kept expecting to surface, but it never did. And I apricated that dedication to the premise – this is a talking horse story.

    Maybe it’s me. This is a story about losing a parent, and that subject still holds a soft spot in me. But I do think that there is more to this story. Though I did know where this story was going, I experienced a special catharsis in the son gaining a better understanding of his father. That might be a very basic desire of all children after their parents die, and though it might be basic, it is still a wish I hope comes true.

    (Say! If you like what you have read, please like, share, and leave a comment. It would help justify my existence.)

  • Short Story Review: “Trash” by Souvankham Thammavongsas

    (The short story “Trash” by Souvankham Thammavongsa appeared in the June 13th, 2022 issue of The New Yorker.)

    (Things might get SPOILED)

    Self-perception, self-worth, first impressions, the desire for acceptance; these were all the themes that swirled around and in the very compact and effective short story “Trash” by Souvankham Thammavongsa. The story is about a young female cashier at a local grocery store who falls in love and marries a man in five days after meeting him at the store, and then the man’s mother comes to visit. Mother-in-laws can be tough, and let’s be honest, the mean mother-in-law is a cliché. Hell, even the illustration for the story leads you to that conclusion as well, and as I read the story, I didn’t have high hopes for what I was going to unfold.

    Yet, what followed was a very well-crafted comparison for two self-made women, their attitudes toward the world they occupied, and how they desired the same thing, but attacked it in two very different ways.

    The young woman, the cashier, is from a world of rude honesty. “If they didn’t like you, you’d know about it and they would say it to your face,” the cashier informs us early in the story, “There is no pretending.” The cashier’s parents died when she was in her last year of high school, and she had to drop out to support herself, as there was no one to help her. She took the job at the grocery store, and she came to enjoy the job, and apricate the employment as it gave her an opportunity to provide for herself – an apartment and furnishing that were all hers.

    The mother-in-law, Miss Emily, had gone to college, graduated law school, became a partner, owned her own practice, bought property, worked hard to make something out of herself, as the young woman tells us. Miss Emily’s husband had died several years ago, a sudden heat attack, and she had married him right out of college, as we are told, because having a family was what she really wanted.

    When the women meet for the first time, they go to dinner and Miss Emily tells stories of her son, and when they all are on their way back to the son’s apartment, Emily askes about the young woman’s family, where in the story of her parents death is told, as well as how proud she is for having supported herself. Miss Emily’s reaction is to ask if she would quit the supermarket job now that she was married to her son. Miss Emily wants her to quit the job and go back to school, to make something better of herself. The next day, Miss Emily takes her shopping, so she can have clothes that look like a wife of a man who works in an office. But when they return to the son’s apartment, Miss Emily changes and starts to complain to her about the cleanliness of her son’s place, and that she, as his wife, needs to do something about it. The young woman takes a break, and goes outside of the apartment, and wonders about a mother’s love, and how she wants that as well.

    And it was this ending of the story that broke my heart a little. I could feel through the words how much the young woman wanted to belong, to be a part of this family, and believing that her mother-in-law was doing all of this out of love, and that she wanted to be recognized as a productive member. But I also felt that for the young woman to get all of that, on some level, she would be forced to admit that where she came from, and what she had made herself into, just wasn’t good enough. Heartbreaking for me, because clearly the young woman was just as much as a “bootstrap” self-made woman as Miss Emily, but her achievements were viewed as less worthy.

    It’s the type of story where I want to tell the young woman that she is good enough, and she does have value. But, I also have the feeling that her desire to be loved and validated will lead her to reject all that she has earned on her own. It’s a harsh reality, but also very honest.

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