Tag: The New Yorker

  • Short Story Review: “Heart” by Shuang Xuetao (Translated from the Chinese, by Jeremy Tiang.)

    (The short story “Heart” by Shuang Xuetao appeared in the October 9th, 2023 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Illustration by Sally Deng

    If you write a story about a parent/child relationship, and then throw in a dying parent, you pretty much are half way to claiming a small place in my heart. My logically analytical side gets thrown out the window, and I am running on emotions. And let’s be honest, if you’re creating art, you want people to have an emotional reaction – it’s like the whole point. I say this because I can be completely biased when it comes to certain subject matters, which can complicate things when I try to review short stories from an objective place.

    Which is why it’s strange for me to say that I didn’t feel an emotional connection to “Heart” by Shuang Xuetao. This is a fine story, well written, engaging, and just odd enough to keep me intrigued with what was happening. And as I was reading this piece, I kept expecting it to “click” into place and tap that raw parent/child emotion in me, but it never came. But I don’t begrudge the story for this, nor am I left feeling that the story “misfired” in its execution. Oddly, I feel this might have been exactly the reaction the story was attempting to create in the reader.

    The story mainly takes places on a medical bus that is driving late at night to Beijing. The passengers are an older man dying of heart disease, his son, a driver, and ER doctor who agreed to accompany the father and son. We learn from the narrator, who is the son, that the heart disease that is killing his father skips every other generation, meaning the son is immune from the fate of his father.

    The tone of the story is straightforward, logical, and there are no literary flourishes. But the events in this story slightly graze the edge of surrealism – just slightly. It’s enough touches to make the story feel that it’s not completely in reality. But still I had to wonder why these touches were there. What did the father’s daily boxing routine really symbolize? Why was the driver sleeping as he drove the vehicle? Also, what about the doctor’s sleeping? Was this all a dream? And the need for the son to have to use the bathroom? Was there a meaning to the son’s self-described laziness and his recent decision to stop working, while the father worked every day; even when he retired, he went and found a new job to keep working? All of these questions left me feeling uncertain, unsettled, and wondering what I was supposed to make of this?

    And then there is a moment in the story where the son wonders what he is supposed to do when his father does pass away. He thinks of all the work that will come with making the arrangements for a funeral; contacting family and people his father worked with, raising money to pay for it all, and cars for the procession. Then the son thinks that once his father is gone, that he will truly be alone and by himself. To that the narrator says, “I guess that’s what freedom looks like nowadays,…” A sobering, and heartbreaking realization, that can also feel overwhelming to the point where one can be left numb, and disconnected.

    There isn’t one way to mourn, and that’s what “Heart” reminded me of. I don’t know what all of these pieces in this story amounted to, but I don’t think Shuang Xuetao is wrong for presenting that either, if that was the intention. Maybe not having a feeling right away is still a sort of feeling. Maybe.

  • Short Story Review: “The Narrow Way” by Liliana Colanzi (Translated from Spanish by Chris Andrews.)

    (The short story “The Narrow Way” by Liliana Colanzi appeared in the September 25th, 2023 issue of The New Yorker.)

    (Do I even need to say SPOILERS?)

    Photograph by William Mebane for The New Yorker

    Liliana Colanzi pretty much nails it in the first four paragraphs of her story “The Narrow Way.” We come to understand that the Devil is real to these characters, that the Reverend holds power over this community, that the protagonist and her sister have an uncomfortable close relationship, and if you leave this community then you leave for good. Everything that follows in this engrossing story relates back to these four paragraphs, thus creating a structure for this world to exist in, leaving us to see how these characters function in it. This set up, which is what it is, was handled so subtly and with a lite touch, that jaded me didn’t pick up on it until I reached the end of the story.

    There were many aspects that I enjoyed in this piece, but I really want to look at the format/structure that Colanzi used to accomplish her story. First was making the reader slightly uncomfortable with the sisters game of “cows and calves” in the third paragraph – somethings not right with these people as they don’t seem innocent, but ignorant to the changes that are happening to them. Clearly the children of the colony are maturing into puberty, but without any guidance due to the “narrow way” that their religion demands, they go blindly forward, stumbling into these changes. And then with the fourth paragraph, we know that this “colony” is a place of repression and control. Everything that follows next in the story is filtered through these two notions, making the rest of the narrative always feel uneasy, and with a threat of violence. As the story unfolds with each new section, this ignorance and violence continue to be heightened, building to the climax.

    And if one criticism must be laid on this story, it is the climax. When I was first reading the story, I was caught up with the narrative, the language, tone, mood, all of it, so the climax felt correct. When I thought back on the story, it became clear that there were only really two outcomes for this story; escape, or death. The idea that this colony would be destroyed or overthrown by its residents is never entertained by any of its characters, so it never was a narrative option to begin with. I understand that escape and death were foreshadowed by Colanzi from the relative start of the story, but… When you tell a story about repression, isn’t the release into freedom, either through escaping or death, the only stratifying options on the table?

    That having been said, “The Narrow Way” is a very good story – built well, written well, and encompassing a very specific world. This is not a place I want to live, as it’s a repressive and disquieting environment. Yet, there is a very honest humanity in this story that is compelling, and makes one yearn for people to be free.

  • Short Story Review: “On the Agenda” by Lore Segal

    (The short story “On the Agenda” by Lore Segal appeared in the September 18th, 2023 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Illustration by Riccardo Vecchio

    “On the Agenda” by Lore Segal is an interesting exercise. I read it twice, enjoyed it both times, but I’m still wondering about the ending. Each time I read it, and I can’t put my finger on why, or where the example is in the story, but I kept thinking about French Absurdist one-act theatre. (I was a theatre major, I read a lot of their works.) Something about this story seemed to parallel that. This story isn’t blatantly absurdist. It does have a foot in reality, but there is something off, which works.

    The story is about ladies who lunch, but not the Sondheim “ladies.” The story of these ladies is broken up into sections; the first being “JANUARY: THE FORGETTING OLYMPICS,” which also happens to be an agenda item for the meeting of the ladies. What if forgetting was an Olympic sport? And the ladies give examples of their forgetting, comparing, and expanding this idea. At this point, the story could be about aging. But with the next section “MARCH: NEXT TO GODLINESS” and “JUNE: FUNK” we are given examples of the ladies friendship, and how they are dealing with their forgetting. And again, it all feels purposefully off center, ever so slightly. But when the final section comes along, “NOVEMBER: NO MORE TRAINS” which is broken up into three sections, with the last being the one I questioned the most – It’s a single paragraph with no dialogue, which is different and shorter than all other sections of the whole story. This paragraph thuds the story to a close, help with a rhetorical last question “For now?”

    From the way the story started with that absurdist feeling I had while reading, I never was expecting this to be a story that would wrap up cleanly, or even conclusively for that matter.  But that last paragraph is completely and radically different from the rest of the story – what was the point? Then I remembered the French Absurdists, who sometimes made the point of not having a point, and just ending things.

    Or it’s about death?

    I’m going with death.

  • Short Story Review: “The Autopsy” by Lyudmila Ulitskaya (Translated, from the Russian, by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.)

    (The short story “The Autopsy” by Lyudmila Ulitskaya appeared in the August 28th, 2023 issue of The New Yorker.)

    (You know there are SPOILERS, right?)

    Photograph by Tereza Zelenková for The New Yorker

    First of all, I do want to give credit and say thank you to the Fiction Editor at The New Yorker, for exposing me to another Russian author. (I haven’t read this much Russian literature since I was a freshman theatre major.) In the writers of late, I have found this very interesting dynamic in their storytelling, where they take a pragmatic and a fantasifull world, and then combine them in a seamless fold of a believable surrealism.

    “The Autopsy” by Lyudmila Ulitskaya continues this form. It is a simple story that moves between a coroner, a mother, and her son. The storytelling is impressive, and with a few lines, I was pulled into this piece. The economy of words, simple yet pushing the story forward, lulls the reader into the throws of this very pragmatic world, first starting with a coroner. Then the story shifts to a mother who is looking for her missing son. Again, the beautiful simple language tells us of her wrenching, difficult life story, and the heartbreaking love she has for her son. Then the story shifts to the son’s perspective, and again we are betwixt by the magic of these words, though the language stays in it’s realistic form, we now move into an ethereal realm. All leading to the final section, and a completion of this story that leaves us feeling that this journey has fulfilled its purpose.

    I loved this story. I loved how it ran me through these lives, how they were connected to each other, and how strong and painful love and loving someone can be. There was a tragedy to this love, but also a dignity to loving someone so much. I appreciated that Ulitskaya swung for the fences on this, and made these two realms fit together. But most of all, I loved they style in which this story was presented; never going down a rabbit hole of flourishes or needless details. It got the job done in an effective use of language (And I know this was a translation) that never felt like a word was wasted.

  • Short Story Review: “The True Margaret” by Karan Mahajan

    (The short story “The True Margaret” by Karan Mahajan appeared in the August 14th, 2023 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Photograph by Eliza Bourner for The New Yorker

    “The True Margaret” by Karan Mahajan, is an interesting short story, which ultimately is a well-crafted piece of fiction, yet I never found myself engrossed by it. The story has a great opening paragraph, which is compelling, but what follows is a deliberate plodding paced story that never rises in intensity, even as the climax approaches. As I finished the story, I liked it, but I was left feeling unsatisfied. I will say this; I do recommend reading this story.

    All the pieces are here for an effective short story. It is set in the past of 1959 London. An arranged marriage, an Indian bride brought 5,000 miles from her home. The adjustment to a new city and culture. The shadow of colonialism, patriarchy, class, and sexism. Questions about the idea of freedom being a reality or an illusion. How threats grow larger and more diabolical in our minds as we dwell on them. The duality of one’s nature. The courage to escape one’s situation, and a resolution that delivers our protagonist to a safer place, but not a rewarding place. There is a lot going on here, and it is all brought up in a natural way, never feeling forced.

    And still, I couldn’t shake the feeling of not being satisfied with the ending. Finally, I had to come to the conclusion that this ending was the point. That the plodding pace was there to help illustrate this point. Doing the right thing, breaking the mold, saving yourself doesn’t mean you get the happy ending – it only means you survived to live another day. And even if you get years beyond that incident, to where it doesn’t necessarily feel real anymore, it sometime can never be forgotten, or forgiven.