#489 Water Seeks its Own Level- Maxine Clair

#489 Water Seeks its Own Level- Maxine Clair

The town is on flood alert and James volunteers to haul sandbags down the levee for the Civil Defense crew. He likes the idea; it’s exciting. He doesn’t tell his wife Pearl where he will be, but she’s used to that. James is a wayward soul with a history of dreaming about getting out of town. He likes the chaos and unpredictable storms.

“It felt good to be rushing around in the streets. This desire to be unfettered in the world came down on him sometimes like rain on an arid field. He drank it in, imagining the streets of Chicago or Harlem, places he had never seen.”

He failed every time he tried to leave town, crawling back to Pearl. He wanted to do something big, something dangerous. Almost drowning while hauling sandbags opened his eyes to the harsh truth of life. Like a raging river, something shouldn’t be tested.

“The gulf between the kind of life he sometimes imagined and his life with Pearl seemed as uncrossable as a wild river.”

Rating: 8-8-8-7 Total= 31

#488 The Breakup Ceremony- Toure

#488 The Breakup Ceremony- Toure

“We are gathered here today to witness the conclusion of a wonderful relationship between two wonderful people.”

This is the custom in Soul City. If a couple is together long enough but doesn’t last, the community throws them a Breakup Ceremony, an un-wedding of sorts. Each party gets to briefly air their grievance and they, supposedly, part under fair circumstances.

“The ceremony spreads the word that it’s over, freeing the two from many awkward questions, sending a tacit message to anyone who’s been waiting for the relationship to dissolve.”

It sounds very civil doesn’t it? Any reason to throw a party I guess. Today’s ceremony goes awry of course, and an good intentions are lost in a flurry of chaos. What didn’t they think was going to happen?

Rating: 7-7-8-7 Total= 29

#487 The Landing- Lydia Davis

#487 The Landing- Lydia Davis

A nervous passenger recounts her experience during an emergency airplane landing. The landing itself is not much of a story, but the narrator’s fearful thoughts makes up the core of the story. It doesn’t appear that they are in all that much danger, but she is phobic and so goes through some of the steps of grief and acceptance.

“Our lives might be almost over. This required an immediate reconciliation with the idea of death, and it required an immediate decision as to the best way to leave this world. What should be my last thoughts on this earth, in this life?”

That would make for a fun dinner party conversation, or possible the topic of a thesis paper in psychology: If you could choose, what would be your last thought before you die?

Rating: 7-7-6-6 Total= 26

#486 Cranberry Relish- Katherine Heiny

#486 Cranberry Relish- Katherine Heiny

Josie, a married woman with two kids and a nice happy life has been sleeping with a man she met on facebook. Now this man is breaking up with her for a woman he met on twitter. The irony of all this isn’t lost on Josie of course who has felt strange about the whole order of things anyway:

“We’re doing all this backwards…their minds had fallen in love before their bodies did and what if their bodies got all stubborn and wouldn’t fall in line?”

If Heiny wasn’t an exceptional storyteller, this is where I’d be saying how saturated I’ve become with tales of infidelity, or I’d say how un-clever the love-in-the-age-of-social-media story line is. If I did say all those things, I’d have a lot of evidence to back my statement up. However, even when I don’t get blown away by her story subjects, I still really enjoy reading Heiny’s stories. Perhaps it’s the matter-of-fact nonjudgmental take on morality issues, or that even when there seems to be little emotion in the characters it’s less about being cold and more about not wallowing in other people’s feelings.

This may be my least favorite in this collection so far, but I’ll still take it over the majority of other stories with similar topics.

Rating: 8-7-7-7 Total= 29

#485 So Many Chances- Anthony Doerr

#485 So Many Chances- Anthony Doerr

The wonders of the ocean are all new to Dorotea, a fourteen-year old girl just moved to Casco Bay, Mane from Ohio. She is immediately struck by the vastness of it:

“She had not expected emptiness, flittery light, a blotted horizon. Waves march in from some obscure haze. For a terrifying moment she can imagine herself the only organism on the planet.”

She quickly finds that the closer you look at things as vast as the ocean, the more you see it teeming with life. She meets a young fisherman and so she learns to fish. When the boy goes away though, she still wants to fish. Like the shells brought by the waves, these are things left behind by the people in our lives.

Her father and the boy are not the perfect people she thinks they are, but that’s ok. The waves will bring more chances tomorrow to catch a fish.

Notable Passage: “Life can turn out a million ways…but the one way life will not turn out is the way you dream it.”

Rating: 9-9-9-9 Total= 36

#484 Smothered and Covered- Tom Barlow

#484 Smothered and Covered- Tom Barlow

As the title suggests, this story takes place late night/early morning in a Waffle House. The waitress, Sandy presides over her normal 3 am crowd which includes her ex husband Tim. A twelve year old girl walks in and Sandy isn’t sure whether to call the Police. In a scene of normal late night Waffle House cast of speed freaks, and other undesirables, the image of a little girl seems out of place. But she’s a smart-mouthed sass-giving customer that doesn’t look like she’s in trouble so they don’t call.

It turns out that the “adult” that came to pick her up was an internet predator and the girl ended up dead the next morning. Now, Tim and Sandy are left guilt-ridden about not interceding and the big mistakes of their past come flooding back.

Notable Passage: “I never realized when I was a kid that every day of your life is a high wire act. Twenty years you can say the right thing, and then pow—one casual comment, one inattentive moment, and you’re in freefall.

Rating: 7-6-7-7 Total= 26

#483 The Night Rhonda Ferguson Was Killed- Edward P. Jones

#483 The Night Rhonda Ferguson Was Killed- Edward P. Jones

Cassandra is a young wayward girl. She’s a tough-girl, partially homeless, violent, and spends her time skipping school. But she loves music and she love’s her best friend Rhonda. Rhonda is the pride of the neighborhood, a rising star in the music world.

While Rhonda is off to meet with record executives, Cassandra is on a little road trip with some girls like her. Then tragedy strikes.

Notable Passage: “She sang on into the night for herself alone, her voice pushing back everything she did not yet understand”

Rating: 8-8-8-8 Total= 32

#482 Foes- Lorrie Moore

#482 Foes- Lorrie Moore

Imagine being at a high-class function, and not only does the person you’re talking to seem oblivious to the sarcastic way you are talking but also seems to be diametrically opposite of your core political leanings. You try to bring the tense moments around with humor but they either don’t take the lifeline or they have no desire to be pleasant.

“Now would not be the time to speak of timing. It would be unlucky to speak of luck. Could he speak of people having things they didn’t deserve, in a room full of such people?”

Baker is an author of a recent George Washington biography and has been invited by a literary magazine to be at their fundraiser. His job as a famous writer is to sit at the table and charm the guests that are paying $500 a plate. He gets stuck in this heated discussion with a self-proclaimed “Evil Lobbyist.” Sounds like loads of fun.

I did find this description of Washington DC to be pretty on-point: “An ostentatious company town built on a marsh—a mammoth, pompous chit-ridden motor vehicle department run by gladiators. High-level clerks on the take, their heads full of unsound sound bites and falsified recall.”

Rating: 8-8-7-7 Total= 30

#481 Mrs. Sen’s- Jhumpa Lahiri

#481 Mrs. Sen’s- Jhumpa Lahiri

Eliot has a new afterschool babysitter. He goes to Mrs Sen’s house. She is a very proper, but pleasant Indian Woman, the wife of the Mathematics Professor at the University. Eliot is the only one in her care. They spend the afternoons in normal rituals, he sits eating crackers and read the comics while she meticulously prepares dinner for her and her husband.

Mrs. Sen seems like a very lonely woman. She misses her home, the people, the closeness of the neighbors, the smells, the fresh fish, etc. It might be possible that she watches after Eliot because she likes the company, not that she needs the money. Back home she had enough money to have her own driver.

This story is strong on the senses; we notice the temperatures, the smells, the colors, the touch of other humans, or the lack of these things—in the case of being able to scream and having nobody hear. There is deep, but understated emotion as we find in most of Lahiri’s stories.

Rating: 9-8-8-8 Total= 33

#480 Lamb to the Slaughter- Roald Dahl

#480 Lamb to the Slaughter- Roald Dahl

Mary Moloney was the perfect housewife, loving and doting on her husband. She was also six months pregnant. Her husband was the perfect husband, a hard working police officer. He comes home after work and she makes drinks and they sit together, enjoying each other’s company. This is a happy marriage.

“She loved him for the way he say loosely in a chair, for the way he came in a door, or moved slowly across the room with long strides. She loved the intent, far look in his eyes when they rested on her, the funny shape of his mouth, and especially the way he remained silent about his tiredness, sitting still with himself until the whisky had taken some of it away.”

Of course things aren’t always as they seem. When secrets are revealed, a horrible crime is committed. They say that the cover up is always worse than the crime. In this case it may also be more delicious too.

Rating: 7-8-8-8 Total= 31

#479 A Mean Utility- Craig Davidson

#479 A Mean Utility- Craig Davidson

If you’re an animal lover, this one could be hard to get through. James and Allsion breed and fight Pit Bulls. We see in graphic and terrible detail the scene of one of their animals winning a dog fight, but then being put down because of injuries sustained during the fight.

They are also trying unsuccessfully to have a child. Impotence and powerlessness are themes running through this one. That and over compensation for said impotence. I don’t care what kinds of lessons these two learn from their dog fighting world, their lack of judgment and compassion would make them lousy parents. If that makes me judgmental…so be it.

Rating: 7-7-7-6 Total= 27

#478 The Dead Hand Loves You- Margaret Atwood

#478 The Dead Hand Loves You- Margaret Atwood

Jack Dace is the revered author of an international horror classic, The Dead Hand Loves You. The story has haunted him his entire life, because of a contract he is bound to.

When he was writing the book he lived with three other housemates, including Irene, the girl he was infatuated with. But he was falling behind on paying rent and they were about to kick him out of the house. So, with desperation and absolutely no foresight, he signs a contract with his housemates. They will forgive his debt for equal shares in the profits of his novel.

“In such ways are devil’s bargains made”

As it turns out his novel was a huge success and his friends kept him to the contract—signed while hung-over at their kitchen table—for the rest of their lives. The issue put a wedge between him and Irene, who married one of the other roommates, and they didn’t speak to each other, except through lawyers for most of following years. Now old, hanging on to the grudge, and a torch for Irene, Jack strikes out to reconnect with the friends he has made wealthy; for reconciliation? Retribution? Reckoning?

I like the story, the concept, although I don’t really feel the love story here at all.

Rating: 8-9-7-8 Total= 32

#477 Oblivion- David Foster Wallace

#477 Oblivion- David Foster Wallace

Oblivion is a paradox about a dream, or it’s a dream about a paradox, or it’s a story about a dream about a paradox. It’s one of those things, or it’s none of them. What it is, is another brilliant example of the genius of DFW.

Imagine a fight you’ve been having with your significant other, a fight that has persisted for months, neither side making headway and no chance of a resolution. You both firmly believe you are in the right and that the other one is just oblivious. Now imagine, as we all do sometimes, are sitting somewhere having the argument play out in your mind, all the anger and vitriol spinning and overflowing until you are about to explode. That’s what this story is.

The paradox turns out to be a Bizarro-Gift-Of-The-Magi-esque circumstance that has kept both parties from a good night’s sleep for quite a while. Wife is kept awake by her husband’s apparent snoring, sits up and screams for him to turn over or sleep in the other room. The husband is flabbergasted because he apparently hasn’t fallen asleep yet so could not have been snoring. After months of fighting they agree to be observed at a sleep clinic. Their analysis astounds both of them.

Then again, none of this may have been real.

Rating: 10-10-10-10 Total= 40

#476 The Conjurer Made Off With the Dish- Naguib Mahfouz

#476 The Conjurer Made Off With the Dish- Naguib Mahfouz

A daydreaming child is old enough to run errands for his mother, but doesn’t have the concentration level to carry out the simple task of going to get some beans from the market. Three times he must return home to be told the details about what to get. When he finally gets the order right, he has lost the money, then he loses the dish, then he gets waylaid by a conjurer's show, then a beautiful girl catches his eye.

Since he will certainly catch a beating when he gets home, might as well stay out to chase the day’s adventures. Oh, to be a daydreaming child again.

Rating: 7-8-7-7 Total=29

#475 House of Grass- Lucia Perillo

#475 House of Grass- Lucia Perillo

This is a pretty morbid story about an old woman who commits suicide to save herself the pain of her advanced years. Apparently a lot of the elderly around here commit suicide. They are in a retirement community near the Puget Sound called Infinite Vistas (I-V for an unfortunately honest Acronym). Because of this deadly phenomenon, its joked motto is:“A place where you can be on death’s door and still get it open yourself.”

Dr, Henry is the local Physician and has seen many of these suicides, and probably assisted in his own wife’s while she was suffering from cancer. Like I said, this is all extremely morbid, and not at all insightful. This doesn’t look deep into the psyche of a suffering soul, or have a political point about the failures of healthcare to deal with the inevitable pain that befalls us when we get older. It’s just a story about one woman who decides to kill herself and throws her own goodbye party, and the blasé manner in which her doctor deals with it.

Rating: 7-6-4-5 Total= 22

#474 How We Avenged the Blums- Nathan Englander

#474 How We Avenged the Blums- Nathan Englander

Three Blum brothers have been under steady harassment from who they only call The Ant-Semite. The smallest, Zvi has just been knocked unconscious and left hanging by his underwear from his friends to find him. The police are called, something not all the Jewish families are willing to do, but nothing of consequence happens.

“Our parents were born and raised in Brooklyn. In Greenheath, they built us a Jewish Shangri-la, providing us with everything but the one crucial thing Brooklyn had offered…a toughness. As a group of boys thirteen and fourteen, we grew healthy, we grew polite, but our parents thought us soft.”

With the grudging support of their rabbi and parents, the Jewish children begin a self-defense training program. They not only want to protect themselves but they want vengeance from past transgressions. When the Blum’s mother is attacked, the kids finally spring to action, but really what good did it do?

I’m not sure what message we are supposed to glean from this story. Not only do the children not really learn self-defense, or proper teamwork, but in the end their “revenge” was wrought by a ringer they brought in to help. Zvi did stand up for himself, but that was it, all the other children acted as mere onlookers. I wasn’t expecting a big good-guy-wins type of ending, but I still missed some sort of conclusion.

Rating: 7-7-6-7 Total= 27

#473 Raymond’s Run- Toni Cade Bambara

#473 Raymond’s Run- Toni Cade Bambara

It’s May Day and Hazel Elizabeth Deborah Parker, the pride of 151^st street, is ready to win another race, she is the fastest runner in the neighborhood, except her father (don’t tell anybody).

She is a tough girl, with a bit of a chip on her shoulder. “I’m ready to fight, cause like I said I don’t feature a whole lot of chit-chat, I much prefer to just knock you down right from the jump and save everybody a lotta precious time.”

Besides running, her other purpose in life is to take care of her bigger brother, Raymond who is a little slow. On race day, Raymond not only watches his sister win, but races along side the track, wanting to be just like her. She see’s this with pride and realizes where her priorities should be.

Rating: 7-6-7-6 Total= 26

#472 Two Men- Denis Johnson

#472 Two Men- Denis Johnson

This is a world filled with temporary connections, drunken courage and bad decisions. The Narrator is at a party with his two “friends” which are more like criminal partners. He gets caught fooling around with another man’s girlfriend and then gets as drunk as he can.

The rest of the night is these three degenerates, driving around town with another drunk they found in the back of their car. They are all just looking for the next thing, the next place to go, all the while worried about what fateful things from their past is on its way to do them harm.

Rating: 6-5-6-6 Total= 23

#471 Our Lady of Peace- ZZ Packer

#471 Our Lady of Peace- ZZ Packer

Lynnea finally got out of her backwoods Kentucky town…only to end up in Baltimore. Her freelance writing job wasn’t paying enough so she took a teaching program and ended up at a public High School.

Teaching public High School in a poorly funded, weakly supported bad part of a city like Baltimore isn’t as bad as you might think; It’s a thousand tomes worse. It is definitely not the place to go to find yourself, or figure out your own life. Children are self-centered creatures, they are supposed to be that way, that’s their job. If you can’t find a way to keep your own insecurities out of the classroom, things will spiral out of control.

I think that’s what happens to Lynnea in this story. Of course the children should behave, of course they should show respect, and want to learn. But if they don’t, is really isn’t their fault?

Rating: 8-7-7-8 Total= 30

#470 The Provincials- Daniel Alarcon

#470 The Provincials- Daniel Alarcon

Nelson and his father visit the old town. His great-uncle has died and they are there to settle his affairs. They were once a ruling family of this town. Raul was a mayor, Nelson’s father was a great promise as an academic. But the town is falling apart like many in this part of the country. The smart, ambitious, talented all leave, mostly to America. They promise to return with what they’ve accomplished to honor their heritage and uplift their families, but they rarely do. And the ones that stay are just as soon corrupted with whatever power they can grab.

Nelson is an actor, and sees the world as a stage, sees the acting and fakeness in everything around him.

“True authenticity…required an absolute, nearly spiritual denial of the audience, or even of the possibility of being watched.”

The centerpiece of this story is a morality play where each person acts their part: the prodigal son, the town standard bearer, the corrupt politician, the “foreigner.”

Nelson’s father decided to abandoned this town a long time ago, seeing the direction it was headed, and wanting better things for his sons. One son is already in the U.S. and the other is awaiting his visa. He wonders if this was all the right path to take. Nelson lives in the shadow of his family’s history and the 500 years of heritage, unsure if he wants that much of a burden on his shoulders.

“No ideology can protect a son from the unwelcome inheritance of his father’s ambition.”

Rating: 8-8-8-7 Total= 31

#469 The Gone Dogs- Frank Herbert

#469 The Gone Dogs- Frank Herbert

This story is about man’s unstoppable need to control the natural world, the hubris to think we can do it without consequence, and the destructive power of material desires.

An amateur biologist makes a horrible decision. He used radioactive carbon egg to mutate hog cholera and then implanted it into a coyote, releasing the infected animal back into the wild. Not understand some basic tenets of natural science, he thought that he could eliminate the dangers coyotes pose to ranchers without doing any damage to other animals. Instead, the entire canine population on earth is about to be wiped out, coyote’s, fox, and the most important to humans, dogs.

“Each man kills the thing he loves.”

Humans reach out to their alien connection on Vega who specialize in bio-genetics, but a series of political snafus and human selfishness makes saving dogs near impossible. With the death on one species, another may be born.

Rating: 7-7-7-6 Total= 27

#468 Lemonade- Maxine Clair

#468 Lemonade- Maxine Clair

On 10^th street in Rattlebone, three girls play their summer game called Lemonade. They are interrupted one day by the whitest lady thay have ever seen. She is dressed in an all white nuns outfit and starts telling them bible stories. The girls call her Sister Joan of Arc.

She is a follower of the Mother Mary and gives the girls rosary beads to secretly honor the matriarchal deity. She also blesses Puddin, who is a slow (probably autistic)  brother of Wanda. Puddin’ startles the neighborhood when he can play back the Moonlight Sonata after hearing in just once.

Sister Joan claims the credit for Mary in delivering such a miracle, but Irene’s mother sees that as blasphemous, there is only on God, and only he can claim such miracles.

“God is jealous…he can whip you worse than any power on earth can, so don’t you go trying him.”

Rating: 7-8-7-7 Total= 29

#467 A Hot Time at the Church of Kentucky Fried Souls and the Spectacular Final Sunday Sermon of the Right Revren Daddy Love- Toure

#467 A Hot Time at the Church of Kentucky Fried Souls and the Spectacular Final Sunday Sermon of the Right Revren Daddy Love- Toure

As if you couldn’t already tell by the title, we are back in Toure’s fictional metropolis of Soul City. Can’t you feel it? Today is a sad day in Soul City. Today is the funeral of the much beloved and equally maligned Revren Daddy Love.

“Daddy Love had not been a young person for many years, but he had made himself into a force of nature so great that people were shocked to discover that dying was something he could do.”

“Daddy Love was colossal, Freckles on his high-yellow skin as large as dimes, a belly as great as a jumbo TV, a mouth that made mailboxes jealous, and a frame so titanic he would just swallow a girl up with one of his patented postservice hugs.”

Daddy Love, as his name suggests, was a ladies man. Having had a go at nearly all the woman of his congregation no matter their looks or marital status. “Daddy Love’s love was as blind as faith and as democratic as the sun.”

There is a ton of dark humor, social commentary and great satire in here, but it’s also just great fun stuff to read. Daddy Love’s church was St. Valentine’s Blessed Temple of Godly Love, Sanctified Ascension, and the Holy Glissando, located in Brooklyn at the corner of Grace Street and Divine Avenue in an abandoned Kentucky Fried Chicken.

“And after a while people came to like using the drive-in window for confession.”

Sometimes faith, love, wrong, righteous, sin, and heaven are all the same thing, wrapped up in a man that is quite literally “Larger Than Life.”

Rating: 8-9-9-8 Total= 34

#466 The Dreadful Mucamas- Lydia Davis

#466 The Dreadful Mucamas- Lydia Davis

Mucama is the Spanish word for maid. This is a journal or running thoughts of a maid’s employer. She herself is condescending and entitled, but the maids are actually pretty insolent. It seems that they inherited the maids from someone else, but we don’t see why they aren’t just fired.

“Con el corer del tiempo, todo se selucionara” (With the passage of time, everything was resolved). Maybe, maybe not.

I enjoy reading this collection, most of which are small “dreams” or passing thoughts written out as one-page works. I enjoy it because it’s a little different, and sometimes different is good. The minimalism makes for easily digested ideas, without clutter. I am not quite sold however, that this is an enduring form of writing. Like hor d’oeuvres served at a cocktail party, they taste good going down, but are easily forgotten. Maybe, that the point. Perhaps with the passage of time…I’ll see the whole picture and feel differently.

Rating: 6-8-6-5 Total= 25

#465 Dark Matter- Katherine Heiny

#465 Dark Matter- Katherine Heiny

Maya is having an affair with her mentor and boss. They began the affair the night she was celebrating her engagement to Rhodes, her fiancé. This is a kind of last fling affair, probably.

She has a theory that the smarter the man, the more likely it is that after sex, as part of a pillow-talk ritual, he will spout off some kind of inane factoid. That a clear mind inspires this kind of knowledge. The story here is glued together with these little facts, like dark matter that glues together the universe.

This story is less about the affair than about relationship dynamics between men and woman. Maya has had men tell her facts her whole life, like she needs to be taught something, but the one time she gives a fact, its truthfulness is questioned. Heiny’s style is impeccable and light. There is a seamless flow to the dialogue and well articulated shape to the story.

Rating: 9-6-7-8 Total= 30

#464 The Hunter’s Wife- Anthony Doerr

#464 The Hunter’s Wife- Anthony Doerr

This is an indescribably beautiful piece of writing. Doerr has a quality in his writing, a quality found in very few writers (Haruki Murakami comes to mind as perhaps the only equal) where you stop reading and it feels like you’ve woken from a day dream. The emotional depth in this story is at once strong enough to feel like a thick blanket keeping you warm against a blizzard and still so fragile that by even mentioning it, it might blow away in the wind. It’s magical, and yet grounded-in-the-earth real. Particularly strong is Doerr’s descriptions of the natural word (a quality we saw in his story, The Deep- (#39 in this blog).

The Hunter’s Wife is a seer, one who can tap into the eyes of dead beings, see where they go and what they feel. She lives with the Hunter in his cabin deep in a Montana Valley.

“Both of them lived in the grips of forces they had no control over—the November wind, the revolution of the earth.”

“When he looked out the cabin window he saw wolf tracks crossing the river, owls hunting from trees, six feet of snow like a quilt ready to be thrown off. She saw burrowed dreamers nestled under the roots against the long twilight, their dreams rippling into the sky like auroras.

            With love still lodged in his heart like a splinter, he married her in the first muds of spring.”

Being stuck in the snowed-in Valley all winter (for five years) she was able to hone her skills by touching animals either in hibernation or frozen by the cold. She can see their dreams. By Spring, she gets bored with the wild, as all the animals wake and she can no longer see their dreams.

“More clearly than ever she could see that there was a fine line between dreams and wakefulness, between living and dying, a line so tenuous it sometimes didn’t exist.”

She is a woman living in the winter, while he lives in the Spring and Summer. Yet, he is the one that seems frozen, solidly set in one place at one time, never changing and never thawing. She must leave the Valley and explore the world and share her gift. He stays behind to tend to his hunting and dreaming of wolves.

“He had given up on finding a wolf in that country although they still came to him in dreams and let him run with them, out over frozen flats under the moon.”

Read this story!

Rating: 10-10-10-10 Total=40

#463 Hearts & Crosses- O. Henry

#463 Hearts & Crosses- O. Henry

Intrigue on a western ranch. Webb Yeager was the foreman of McAllister’s ranch. He was a stern and respected cow-punch and his men liked him. McCallister liked how his foreman ran the ranch, but didn’t like that his daughter and him were getting too close. But love will endure, the two developed a secret code to talk with each.

I found this story a little out of O.Henry’s wheelhouse. You expect a little dating in language and tone, but even for O.Henry’s time the attempts at lingo and dialect fall a little flat. This is not O.Henry’s New York City. It’s inauthentic and as story telling goes, not of the caliber of O.Henry’s best.

Rating: 6-6-5-5 Total= 22

#462 The First Day- Edward P. Jones

#462 The First Day- Edward P. Jones

This is a touching first day of school story. A mother takes her daughter to kindergarten for the first time. She takes her to the wrong school though. She wanted her daughter to go to the older school that is across from her church. That’s the school she knows about and that’s where she has thoughts of her daughter learning all the things she hasn’t.

When they arrive at the correct school we see that the mother herself can’t read. This is why her daughter’s education is so important. Her mother is proud but a little out of her element. We see new vs. old as a symbol here, the new school, her new shoes, etc. When her mother leaves her in the hands of her new teacher, we see her old socks have been torn, and the sound of her fleeting footsteps echo like the sound of time marching on.

Rating: 9-8-8-8 Total= 33

#461 Paper Losses- Lorrie Moore

#461 Paper Losses- Lorrie Moore

Here is another story about a failed, loveless marriage, perhaps even infidelity. At this point of this story-a-day exercise of mine there are some topics that I just don’t like to read about anymore. This is one of them. So, I say right away, I know that it’s not Moore’s fault that I am saturated with this topic. On the other hand, stories that astound the reader often do so by transcending the topic. Yesterday, the Lahiri story I read, Sexy, was about infidelity and a failed marriage, but I found interest in it, because at least it was coming from a different perspective.

Trying to stay somewhat objective, I found the writing here to be a little uneven. Moore is exceedingly clever and creative in her word play and ironic observances. However, it seems here that those moments overshadowed the objective of the piece. If I stop and say—hey, that phrase the author used is a clever one—then I’m taken out of the narration a bit. I didn’t believe I was hearing the narrator speaking, I was seeing the writer, writing clever phrases.

But, some of them were definitely winners, or at least fodder for bumper stickers:

“Rage had it’s medicinal purposes, but she was not wired to sustain it, and when it tumbled away, loneliness engulfed her, grief burning at the center in a cold blue heat.”

“Like a person, a marriage was unrecognizable in death, even buried in an excellent suit.”

“Marriage stopped being comic when it was suddenly halted, at which point it became divorce, which time never disrupted, and so the funniness of which was never-ending.”

“All husbands are space aliens.”

“Hope is never false. Or it is always false. Whatever, it’s just hope.”

“Divorce she could see, would be like marriage: a power grab, as in who would be the dog and who would be the owner of the dog.”

Rating: 7-5-5-7 Total= 24

#460 Sexy- Jhumpa Lahiri

#460 Sexy- Jhumpa Lahiri

Miranda works as a telemarketer for a radio station. She is twenty-two and knows only two people from India, her co-worker and her boyfriend. Her co-worker is recently obsessed with talking about her cousin who’s husband just left him for another woman. Miranda’s boyfriend is also married.

At first Miranda is taken with being someone’s mistress. She is lonely and likes having someone to be with. She feels loved, she feels romantic and she feels sexy. However, hearing the other side of the story from her co-worker makes her feel less special. She see’s first hand what this kind of philandering can lead to and she's losing her taste for it.

Rating: 8-7-7-7 Total= 29

#459 Taste- Roald Dahl

#459 Taste- Roald Dahl

This is a fun story. Once a year, Mike Schofield hosts a dinner party attended by the famous gourmet, Richard Pratt. He prides himself on his taste and is proud of having such an honored guest. The last few years, they have had a little wager. They bet a case of wine on whether Pratt could name the vintage of the wine served in a blind tasting. So far, Pratt has won each time.

This year, Schofield has scoured the wineries looking for a selection so remote and rare that there is little chance Pratt would being able to match his previous feats of taste. At the dinner, Pratt seems nonchalant and a his non-interest in the meal irks his host. So, when the yearly wager is broached, there is a tension in the air that causes Schofield to be duped into upping the bet to ridiculous stakes. He will put his daughters hand in marriage on the table against Pitt’s two country homes.

Pratt’s wine tasting process and the outcome of the wager is built up and crafted wonderfully. This is short story writing in a very pure sense. I loved it.

Rating: 8-9-10-9 Total= 36