Tag: The New Yorker

  • Short Story Review: “Snowy Day” by Lee Chang-Dong (Translated from the Korean, by Heinz Insu Fenkl and Yoosup Chang.)

    (The short story “Snowy Day” by Lee Chang-Dong appeared in the March 6th, 2023 issue of The New Yorker.)

    (Yes, there will be SPOILERS!)

    Illustration by Anuj Shrestha

    “Snowy Day” is an okay story. Not awful, not amazing either, and in the end, I do recommend that you should read it. It was written by Lee Chang-Dong, translated from the Korean by Heinz Insu Fenkl and Yoosup Chang. I broke my own rule with this story and looked up who the author was to gain some background information, as I was curious and wanted to know why the author structured this story the way that he did. By the way, Lee Chang-Dong is an accomplished South Korean film director, screenwriter, and novelist.

    What struck me about “Snowy Day” was that the story felt like it was written from a different time; specifically, like a late 1940’s short story in Collier’sor some other magazine of that period. And what I mean by that is those stories of that time were structured in a classic form, but were beginning to take on a more Modern subject matter, so those stories had a disjointed, incongruent feel. That’s what “Snowy Day” felt like.

    The structure of this piece had an old feel to it. The story is bookended with a girl coming to a military camp looking for her new boyfriend, who is a private on the base. Then the story shifts to the private being on guard duty with a corporal, and this is where the majority of the action takes place, in this one setting. And the story follows the rule of three multiple times, and even slips in an “O. Henry” twist at the climax of the “dumb” character being smart, and the “tough” character being a coward. Then we return back to the girl being informed that the private is in the hospital and she leaves the base.

    Nothing surprised me in this story. Literary structure and form handled badly can be formulaic, and Lee Chang-Dong avoided that. The character of the private is intriguing, and made a good protagonist, while the girl feels more like a woman from a Poe story; tragic and doomed to have her heart broken. The other characters are left to serve the structure of the story. Yet, there still was this purposeful disjointed feel to the story. That these worlds weren’t fitting together as they should, which created an underlining tension. I think the structure is what helped create that, functioning as foreshadowing since we know how this structure is supposed to work.

    Like I said, the story is okay. I didn’t feel like my time was wasted reading “Snowy Day,” but it wasn’t compelling either. What I liked in reading this was seeing an author that respected and knew how to use form and structure to tell a story.

  • 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: “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.

  • Best of 2022 – Short Story Review: “Wood Sorrel House” by Zach Williams

    (The short story “Wood Sorrel House,” by Zach Williams, Appeared in the March 21st, 2022 issue of The New Yorker.)

    (I see spoilers!)

    I do not know what to make of this story. I haven’t stopped thinking about the thing since I finished reading it, but I still can’t come up with what it’s all about. And this is meant as a compliment. If a story lives on in the reader’s mind, and doesn’t dissolve into forgotten nothingness as soon as they are finished with it, then that author has achieved something. I tip my hat to you Zach Williams; your story is taking up space in my brain.

    “Wood Sorrel House” is about a couple and a toddler seemingly trapped in a cottage in the woods. Days pass, they age, but the toddler does not. Each morning food and supplies are replenished in the house, thus allowing them to live in the cottage. The couple tries to figure out where they are and why they are there, and soon they discover the toddler is never able to get hurt.

    I have an ego, and some days I think I am smart, and when I started reading this story, I was like, “Oh, this is an absurdist styled story, and it’s a metaphor for death.” Because, if my college education taught me anything, it’s that absurdist/surrealist/modernist stories are all really about death. But as I kept reading, I began to doubt my ego-driven conclusion. Why was the snapping turtle killed? What happed when the male in the couple disappeared? What happened to the toddler when the woman went down to the lake for days at a time? Why did the couple age, and get injured, but the toddler was immune and also ageless?

    I found that this story was taping into emotional territories that made me react. Perhaps it’s because I’m a parent, but I kept feeling this sense of dread for the toddler, that something awful was going to happen. There was a sense of disgust in how the man went out and destroyed nature. And a sense of sorrow as the woman tried to make sense of all of it. I was reacting to this story, I was compelled by it, but I couldn’t make sense of it. If it wasn’t about death, what was it about? Was it the lack of logic? Things stayed the same at the cottage, but the outside world seemed to keep moving; not changing into something different, but just moving along. Was this a metaphor for dealing with Covid? Maybe it had no meaning, but that would make it about death, right? What was it? Like I said, I don’t know what to think about the story, but the story is making me think about what it could be about. That’s a pretty successful story.

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