#793 The Virgin of Monte Ramon- Mia Alvar

#793 The Virgin of Monte Ramon- Mia Alvar

Danny Willson, Jr. was born with deformed legs. His mother told him they were the honorable legacy from his hero grandfather, an American solider that lost his legs while helping to liberate the town from the Japanese. He was satisfied with this answer and satisfied with his old fashioned wheelchair that was an “heirloom” from the same grandfather.

Whether created by legacy or a doctor’s mistake was something he wouldn’t discover for some time. What he did know was that his deformity caused him to be mocked by his classmates. This derision he took well, but wished above anything that it would stop. Enter a new girl in his class, Annalise. She was a native, poor servant girl that helps her mother clean Danny’s house sometimes. She was different, and began being a new target for the childish sneers.

“I had longed for the day when my schoolmates would find a new target, a victim other than me. Now that she was here—a girl, who seem unfazed by the teasing—I felt none of the relief I’d expected. I felt only shame at my own school-yard weakness and a deep curiosity about this girl they called the Negrita.”

They were serendipitously paired for the coming festival dance, one they wouldn’t actually be able to take part in. She also had health problems, and this helped them become much closer. They were both imperfect and broken, but to each other that made them the same. Their friendship did not go unnoticed by his mother who was a snob without cause: “Another outcast only the Messiah of Monte Ramon can love.”

The truth about his defective legs came to light and changed his perspective on a great many things. But he still doted on Annalise.

“It seemed possible for the first time that the defects of our bodies—mine, Annalise’s, anyone’s—were errors of nature. Caused and cured by science, nothing more.”

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

#792 Human Snowball- Davy Rothbart

#792 Human Snowball- Davy Rothbart

A late night Greyhound bus trip, a thief with a stolen car and a roll-full of scratch-off lottery tickets, a man about to turn 110 years old, a bar that “smelled like someone just puked on a campfire,” and a desperate play for love…yup this is a Valentine’s day story!!

The cast of characters that end up as passengers in the back seat of the stolen car as they kill time makes for a very fun Buffalo road-trip adventure story as well. There’s business deals, race conflicts, food runs, good times-bad-times, and runs-in with law enforcement. Great nights like this don’t happen all the time, but when they do, thye make the other days worth it.

Notable Passage: “A plume of merriment rose in my chest that was six parts the gentle glow of heading into any bar on a cold, snowy night, and four parts the wonderful, unpredictable madness of having a hundred-and-ten-year-old-man I’d just met on a Greyhound bus as my wingman.”

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

#791 Lalibela- Gabriel Teodros

#791 Lalibela- Gabriel Teodros

Lalibela is a “Town in northern Ethiopia famous for its eleven monolithic rock-cut buildings (how they were built is unknown).”

Gebre Mesqel Lalibela is a member of the royal family, but with his powerful partner Kibra and his mind, he will help unlock great truths, technology and start renaissance.  “His imagination was a threat to the establishment.” He discovers time travel by observing known physical properties. In his travels he sees the mistakes that the human race will make (have made) and although he tries to fix the doomed course of history, he feels overwhelmed and powerless. Perhaps a strong pair can be more effective than even the strongest individual.

I love when a good Sci-Fi story is deeply grounded in human history. And if you’re going to be deeply grounded in human history, what better place than Ethiopia. “Like the history of all humanity, it was buried in Ethiopia under nothing but a thin layer of dust.” The town of Lalibela is a real town and the monoliths still stand there defying historic understanding. In this story they are imagined as a spaceport, and things like a Mesqel, a religious staff, is now used also for time travel. These details help layer this story.

Although I find the concepts in this story inspirational and the ideas beautifully presented, as a short story it falls apart a bit. If Lalibela were to realize the things he did, this story should be longer. More space is needed to let this all unfold. As it is, I loved the first half, but the exposition made a promise that the denoument didn’t really fulfill. And at times, especially the visit to Gondor, year 3000, it got a little preachy for me.

As a reader and a person I’m glad this story was written, as someone trying to analyze short fiction, I’d like to see this given more time and turned into a much longer piece, or series, or a novel.

Notable Passage: “It’s like three heavens just opened up and became one. In the stars, on the earth, and within ourselves.”

Rating: 7-9-6-6 Total= 28

#790 The Green Heart- Felisberto Hernandez

#790 The Green Heart- Felisberto Hernandez

This is a very contemplative piece. A lonely pianist ponders his life while staring at a discolored newspaper that covers his kitchen table. Memories fall out as he lazily pokes at the edges of the paper.

“All of these memories lived in some part of me that was like a small lost town known only to itself, cut off from the rest of the world. For many years nobody had been born or dies there. The founders of the town had been my childhood memories. Then later, years later some foreigners had arrived…This afternoon I had a feeling I was in that town for a rest, as if misery had granted me a holiday.”

Rating: 9-7-8-7 Total= 31

#789 The Condition of New Death- China Mieville

#789 The Condition of New Death- China Mieville

This is a mind experiment in perspective. There is a new way people see death, it is called New Death. People dies the same ways at the same rates and in the same places, but the manner in which the living perceive of the dead bodies has changed. It began with the death of one M. Morris.

“With great alarm, Mr. Morris began to walk around the body, but he stopped when, in his words ‘those feet wouldn’t stop pointing at me.’ Ms. Morris’s body appeared to him to be swiveling like a needle on a compass, her feet always facing him.”

“Stated most simply, New Death is the condition whereby human corpses now lie always on a horizontal vector—no matter the angle of the surface or the substance of the matter below them-and now orient so that their feet are facing all observers, all the time.”

The mind experiment comes in when you realize that even on video, no matter which angle you look from, that angle will be feet first, even when recorded at the same time. 

This phenomenon, not possible in our real physical word, is however a common occurrence in first-person-shooter video games. So, this could be seen as a satire on a society that is unable to unplug. That a society’s perspective has been shaped so much by the viewpoint of our personal electronic devices that it has become itself reality or at least a substitute for it that is so good, the people cannot differentiate one from the other. I say, not entirely far of from where we are now. Perspective becomes reality. 

Rating: 8-10-7-7 Total= 32

#788 Near of Kin- Octavia Butler

#788 Near of Kin- Octavia Butler 

A young woman deals with the death of her mother. She was given up by her mother immediately and raised by her grandmother. While her mother was sometimes around, she was not involved nor close saying that she was unfit to be a mother. 

“I believed what I said before—that she had wanted a child to prove she was woman enough to have one. Once she had the proof, she went on to other things."

The girls uncle was her closest relative and now helps her sort through her mother’s belongings and her own feelings of resentment and hurt. She finally confronts the truth she has unraveled about who her father really is. Butler calls this story a “Sympathetic story about incest.” That it is for good and bad.

Rating: 7-8-7-6 Total= 28

#787 The Prayers of the Sycophant- Fatima Shaik

#787 The Prayers of the Sycophant- Fatima Shaik

Sharon has a hard time with the changes around her. The neighborhood has changed and her husband, a friendly neighborly man, has fallen in with the bad elements of the changing neighborhood. She thinks he is using drugs again, but she is afraid to ask.

“She should have examined whether his eyes were more than tired, and asked if someone else’s cigarette smoke was in his hair. She should have asked. Or she should have known and done something…Instead, she gardened.”

Her fig tree is the symbol to her of everything that’s wrong. It grows lopsided and most of the fruit falls into the next yard over. Instead of going over there and gathering them up, or doing something else proactive, she laments the injustice. New people now occupy that house, and they never stay that long, she has no desire to learn their names. She is more upset at the dying figs.

 “What a waste…She had meant the figs, the children, and the dysfunctional families.”

When her husband dies of an overdose, her agoraphobia reaches new levels. Without help it is unlikely she will be able to live a normal life. She desperately needs help.

“And she stayed on her knees and begged as the sun fell and the figs fell and the juice seeped from the rotting fruit like the very nature of injustice.”

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

#786 The Origin of Whales- Randall Kenan

#786 The Origin of Whales- Randall Kenan

This is just a slice-of-life story. Aunt Essie is over to watch her nephew Thad while his mother is out. She is strict and old school but they have a good time. He argues about having to eat collard greens but is a good boy and eats them. Aunt Essie tells him a funny story about eating greens, an outhouse, and a bear sighting. Then she helps him with his homework. He is learning about evolution and the origin of whales. Aunt Essie isn't sure about all that.

Rating: 7-7-7-6=27

#785 Remora, IL- Kevin Leahy

#785 Remora, IL- Kevin Leahy

The factory town of Remora, Illinois was on the brink of collapse. The car plant shut down and unemployment was skyrocketing. They turned to the only opportunity they saw, the private prison industry. It guaranteed construction jobs, guard jobs and a steady stream of visitors to fill shops, hotels, and restaurants. They accepted the change before knowing exactly what it would mean. At first they were relieved.

“Those first paychecks were intoxicating. We’d forgotten the feeling of having money, and were starving for it.”

As the prison opened, they got a sense of life as a prison town. New people, a caste system of society and although good paying jobs, they were jobs that changed the nature of a person. Rather than instilling pride they created anxiety and violence. And they also had to acknowledge the inmates themselves, most people don’t ever have to really think about what a prison was.

“To the extent that we thought about the men in those buses, we imagined them as one type, multiplied: sullen, dangerous, and deserving of punishment, but potentially redeemable, through faith and good works.”

And then there was the face-to-face encounter with the racism made apparent by locking up a large percentage of non-white Americans. Racism in the system, in the country, in themselves.

“It was true that among many of us, a mental short-hand had developed: if we saw white strangers, we assumed they were police or lawyers…If they weren’t white, we assumed they were visiting an incarcerated friend or family member.”

This story appears in the 2013 Best American Mystery Stories. I don’t find any mystery in this story. If you told me this was non-fiction I wouldn’t have a hard time believing it. This is a great, sobering view of just one of the thousands of effects the over-inflated prison industry has on this country.

Rating: 9-8-9-9 Total= 35

#784 Roog- Philip K. Dick

#784 Roog- Philip K. Dick

Inventive, funny, and an idea copied many times since Roog’s 1951 publication. Boris is a guard standing outside his master’s house. The important stores of food are being kept outside in metal bins and it’s Boris’ job to make sure they are secure. Strange foreigners come by each week and pillage the food bins despite his best efforts to ward them off.

You think of Philip K. Dick and assume this is a sci-fi story and the Roogs are space aliens or something. But as it turns out, Boris is a dog, the Roogs are garbage men taking out the trash from the garbage bins. Boris barks up a storm each week when they come by annoying the neighbors. A good story is all about changing perspective.

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

#783 The Other- Tove Jannson

#783 The Other- Tove Jannson

An artist or a writer is suddenly stricken with inspiration. It comes in the form of a sort of out-of-body-experience. He is literally standing beside himself and he begins to draw letters, but not necessarily words or sentences. He likes the space and shape of the letters, so he lets the meaning come on its own.

“He usually started inking from the bottom up so that he wouldn’t be distracted by the meaning of he words.”

Then he can’t find it. The inspiration is gone and he stands alone. He misses the perspective he needs to create his art. Without it he wanders around avoiding all contact literally looking for himself. A very powerful metaphor for the artistic struggle.

Notable Passage: “His whole body burned with an enormous unused power.”

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

#782 Strange People- Bohumil Hrabal

#782 Strange People- Bohumil Hrabal

We are in a cold war factory, industrial, metallic, gray, bleak. The workers are told they have new higher quotas and they refuse to work until they see their shop steward. All quotas are supposed to be negotiated with the workers, but they aren’t. A theory of communism in practice is played out and workers rights as always are put to the test.

“If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn the other…Good advice for a saint, but a worker? If he doesn’t go straight for the solar plexus, he’s doomed.”

The problem with communism, especially in cold war eastern Europe was that few of the theories of worker-led production ever materialized. The hierarchies still existed and the workers were in poorer conditions than ever, but the slogans made it sound good. In practice the pride and patriotism was a murky thing at best and literally a propaganda film at times.

Notable Passage: “We can make a living here boys, but we can’t make a life.”

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

#781 It Grows on You- Stephen King

#781 It Grows on You- Stephen King

Old legends die hard. The biggest name in the small blue collar town of Gates Mills, Maine is Joe Newell. He was the man who bought the failing Mill  in the early 20^th century and turned it around. But he was not liked. He built a house on his large property and didn’t use local help. He never entered the local shops, nor talked to the local people. He married an unlikely woman who gave birth to a monster that died immediately. 

The resentment towards his riches and secrecy aren’t anything unique to mill towns, nor was his aloofness and snobbery. But what made him a little more odd was his house. He was alone and really didn’t need much space, but over the years he kept building new wings to his estate. “It was considered to be an affront to the sensibilities and an offense to the eye.” 

The property was also considered bad luck, as everyone who lived there, including his child, his wife, his cows, died. Eventually during the market crash he took his own life in a wing that had just been built. The property never stayed in the same hands too long, and caused similar tragedies. Now after all these years, a new wing is being added.

This is the kind of Norman Rockwell meets H.P. Lovecraft story that King usually does so well. However this one just didn’t work for me. The plot unfolded slowly and the payoff wasn’t satisfying. I found the overall style to be scattered and unfocussed. As always the imagery was enjoyable and his description of small town Americana was impeccable. One big problem I had was that the narrator, written in the author's voice (not a described third person), used some questionable language (kike, wop, moron, nitwit) that rang weird not coming from a character. Not sure why that decision was made.

Notable Passage: “Cornstalks stand in leaning rows like soldiers who have found some fantastic way to die on their feet.”

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

#780 Away From- Amelia Gray

#780 Away From- Amelia Gray

This is a Vegas abduction story written from the perspective of the woman who has been tied up in the abductor’s apartment. She is remarkably calm about the situation, reasoning ways to survive, knowing that there have been five woman who have unsuccessfully tried to escape before her. She sees her mistakes but even with impending doom, they don’t weigh heavily on her.

Notable Passage: “The thing about drugs is you can fight them all your life but you’re fighting a brain that wants you dead, and the thing about fighting is that you can't fight forever.”

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

#779 Hollow and Far Away- Anthony Grooms

#779 Hollow and Far Away- Anthony Grooms

Ralphie and his family were pretty well off for their community. His father was the only black man working at the plant and he was one of only two black children at his school.

“I was the only black boy in the fifth grade, and the teacher was hard and didn’t like me. But Daddy was even harder than the teacher.”

They were invited to visit his Uncle in the country. Life was different out here and so were expectations. But family always try to show each other up. However, no matter how much you pretend you’re different or better, those that hate you look at you all the same.

Notable Passage: “Discipline and opportunity. But a little wine ain’t gone kill ‘im.”

Rating: 7-7-7-7 Total= 28

#778 No Time for Seniors- Sidney Offit

#778 No Time for Seniors- Sidney Offit

Another selection out of the fun Brooklyn Noir collection, this one is just a little too gumshoe for my taste. Every sentence is packed with jargon, lingo and a bit over the top with the Brooklyn-ese dialect. Example:

“I need you pistol Pete…The cops have got Scoop in for murder. Murder. They say he done in Front Page Shamberger and Sherlock Iconoflop.”

Not that I can’t appreciate a good gumshoe name like Front Page Shamberger, but I generally like my noir a little darker and little more subtle. Short stories are too short to spend so much time getting into the “voice” of the piece. If I spend half my time trying to separate names from private detective jargon, I can’t enjoy the ride as much. Personal taste.

Rating: 7-6-6-6 Total= 25

#777 Commitment- Thomas Glave

#777 Commitment- Thomas Glave

In less than twenty-four hours, Ricky, the youngest of seven boys, will marry Renee. The marriage is not a welcomed blessing for Ricky, he doesn’t want to get married, especially not to a woman. He sits in the bedroom, of his long-time lover, Lou Jay and laments the lie that his future will become. Renee is pregnant, and his father has threatened him about getting married, and he doesn’t want to go against his family or social norms for that matter. He is afraid, confused and only eighteen.

“I just don’t see that y’all got much choice now. You know Daddy Malcolm ain’t playing. I think he would rather see you dead. He don’t want him no sissy son no matter what.”

They argue about it, having the back and forth of guilt, promise, resentment and passive aggressiveness that one can imagine given the circumstances. Lou Jay is more secure with himself and what he wants, although he isn’t the one under pressure. They struggle with the unfairness of having to live a lie, and wonder, as many have who they think they are fooling:

“Do they know. Do they know. The disgust in his face and voice cruel enough to slash cane.”

In the end, how far can a soul be pushed? How far can you repress true feelings before they bust out? When they finally do, they often come out as anger and violence. Tough subject here but well written.

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

#776 World Party- Rebecca Lee

#776 World Party- Rebecca Lee

On a college campus is a group called Harvest. They are a progressive group that learns about social movements, civil disobedience and as many college students do, put that learning to practice. During a recent hunger strike, a student was taken to the hospital and the activities of the group have come under question. The faculty advisor in particular is the focus of the attention. Some see him as a well-meaning academic, and others feel he deserves all the blame.

“I think you’ll find that he’s the devil. Like, the real devil. Using young people’s passions against them, and for his own purposes.”

The advisor must appear before the faculty hearings committee where the narrator sits on a three professor panel. “If a faculty member ever did anything suspect—threatened the dean with a gun, gave their classes all A’s, denied the holocaust—it was referred to us, the most unskilled tribunal ever assembled.”

The deciding vote lies in the narrator’s hands. While she is deciding she attends her son’s World Party, a Quaker alternative to Halloween. The event has the children promoting the things and people of the world they have learned in class.

Rating: 7-7-7-7 Total= 28

#775 Vessel- Jon McGreggor

#775 Vessel- Jon McGreggor

An old love, most likely unrequited comes to visit Mary in a snow storm. It is soon after her husband James’ death. He comes unannounced and brings flowers.

“It was just like him, not to have said he was coming. James would never have done such a thing. But neither would James have thought to bring flowers.”

As she mulls why he is here, and whether it’s a good thing, the men lets slip the reason for his visit. He wants something of Mary, but it is not what Mary thinks he wants. She is angry at his presumptuousness and of his blindness.

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

#774 Story, Story!- Chinelo Okparanta

#774 Story, Story!- Chinelo Okparanta

A new woman is seen on Sunday coming to the small church on Rumuola road. Nneoma sees that she is pregnant and is happy to welcome her to the congregation. She begins telling her a story. It’s a story she told to another four years ago, also pregnant. She tells this story as the pastor is giving his sermon. By the end, she is in tears and the woman invites her to dinner. That was the outcome she had hoped. The horror of her plan comes clear by the end, even she is not sure whether she will go through with it, again.

Four stories in this collection, Happiness, like Water, and I haven’t felt any real connection with them yet. They’re fine stories, just not evoking the emotions that I can see are there. 

Rating: 7-6-5-5 Total= 23

#773 Under the World- Lucas Southworth

#773 Under the World- Lucas Southworth

“Some people believe the subway has the power to return to you what you’ve lost. Some believe it has the power to lose you.”

A man tries to get lost in the subway system. This system is a worldwide subway system, it’s a whole underground world unto itself. Or maybe it’s all just in this man’s mind. He passes through station after station, smelling the food, seeing the people. A man has seen him several times and accuses him of following him. He us lost in a different way. Everyone moves about searching, searching…and rarely fnding.

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

#772 At The Terminal- Bryn Chancellor

#772 At The Terminal- Bryn Chancellor

This is the tale of a breakup that we see small remains of from one-side at the end. Francie is a 34 year-old loner that was pushed into an online romance by her more successful sister. On line dating is:

“Like Jane Austen on speed…like Simone De Beauvoir to Sartre, but not.”

Getting dumped from that romance, Francie is waiting in the early morning rain outside a airport waiting for her flight, trying not to smoke. She tries to bum a cigarette from a man in a wheel chair and gets rebuffed. She takes the cold refusal as another rejection and tries her hardest to get just a touch of kindness out of the man, to prove that all humanity is not lost.

“A little compassion. A little interest in a fellow human being.”

Notable Passage: “Bad first date, bad sex, bad hangover—the trifecta.”

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

#771 The Afterlife- Amy Hempel

#771 The Afterlife- Amy Hempel

A girl relates what life is like for her father after her mother dies. “He was kind, cultured, youthful, and good-looking.” This had woman of all sorts coming to visit and making all sorts of plays for her dad. She saw through all of it with childhood insight. He spent a good deal of time with one woman in particular that she liked, but sometimes a spouse left behind just can’t move on.

“She understood that my father’s life had ended with my mother’s death, and that what he inhabited now was a kind of afterlife—not dead, but not alive to possibility.”

This story is the kind delicate and flowing short story that we expect from Amy Hempel.

Notable Passage: “That’s the trouble with people in general—you have to run into them.”

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

#770 Reeling for the Empire- Karen Russell

#770 Reeling for the Empire- Karen Russell

What I have found over the last few years during this project, is that the entire genre of short story writing is filled with the fingerprints of Kafka, from mere references, respectful homages or outright theft of ideas. So far no other story has come close to reminding me of the depth and soul of Kafka until now. I am left breathless by this story. Where Kafka often goes dark and desolate, Russell infuses hope and human endurance. Imagine metamorphosis meets fight club!

We are in the Japanese Empire mid nineteenth century. Someone has found a tea that can turn a human into a silkworm hybrid. Girls are “recruited” to drink this tea and work in silk factories where they spend their lives in the same room spinning out the best silk the world has ever seen. But they will never see the outside again, never see their families, never truly be human.

We see these Kaiko-Joko (silkworm workers) in a place they have dubbed “Nowhere Mill”. One girl, for the first ever, has drunk the tea voluntarily and a little too fast. She survived the metamorphosis, but remains a little off inside. Eventually this boldness has made her aware of the potential of her new form, or the ability to turn bad to good, weakness to power. She will not be marginalized again, and neither will her co-workers.

“For the past several months, every time I’ve reminisced about the Agent coming to Gifu, bile has risen in my throat. It seems to be composed of every bitterness: grief and rage, the acid regrets. But then, in the middle of my weaving, obeying a queer impulse, I spit some onto my hands. This bile glues my fingers to my fur. Another of nature’s wonders. So even the nausea of regret can be converted to use.”

Wow…I love this!!!

Notable Passage: “These wings of ours are invisible to you.”

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

#769 The Whipping- Julia Elliott

#769 The Whipping- Julia Elliott

Kate is an adolescent girl who just got caught stealing a pack of her father’s cigarettes. She will be punished, whipped. This story is the countdown to that whipping. They won’t whip her right away because whipping a child while angry is akin to abuse. So she spends her time trying to keep her father angry to delay the inevitable; angry or drunk because he won’t whip her while he’s drunk either. Unfortunately for her, her father is very adept at whipping:

“My father, an elementary school principal who paddles kids for a living, has several lines on his resume devoted to his whipping expertise. He’s developed it into a high artform.”

There is definitely something off about the father. And like father, like children, they take cues from that oddness. The macabre killing and eating of the robin is another punishment, one that the whole family must suffer. 

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

#768 Parson’s Pleasure- Roald Dahl

#768 Parson’s Pleasure- Roald Dahl

We have all come to know TV shows like American Pickers where treasure hunters try to uncover some hidden gem in a garage full of rubbish. I watched that show once and cringed at the buyers shamelessly trying to buy the antiques at a ridiculously low amount even though they knew exactly how much the stuff was worth. This story is about that.

Mr. Biggus (sounds like bogus, right?) is an antiques dealer. He has a reputation for finding all the best antique furniture and seems to have an endless supply. His method for procurement is his Sunday outings to the country. He dresses like a Reverend and claims to be interested in historic preservation of old English furniture. He preys on the emotions and ignorance of small country farmers and buys pieces at 5% of what they are worth. 

When he finds the holy grail of antiques, his greed may get the best of him. He better be careful not to outsmart himself.

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

#767 Family Dancing- David Leavitt

#767 Family Dancing- David Leavitt

Half of this story is a ho-hum tale about a couple of failed marriages. Suzanne is married to a new man, Bruce. She has a new house, new kids, lost thirty pounds and these status symbols are the focus of her life. The other part of this story is about the family secrets she fails to see while too involved in her own dramas. Her son is graduating prep school and hasn’t told her yet that he is gay. It’s not clear whether she is the only one that doesn’t know yet.

Notable Passage: “On those rare occasions—like today—the power of alcohol impresses her tremendously, and she wants to recommend it, like a wonder drug.”

Rating: 7-5-6-5 Total= 23

#766 Nirvana- Adam Johnson

#766 Nirvana- Adam Johnson

Wow, after 765 stories, it has become more and more difficult to find truly unique plots. This one was surprising. This is the first story in the National Book Award winning collection Fortune Smiles. Having recently read his Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Orphan Master’s Son, I was excited to get into this book.

Charlotte suffers from Guillaine-Barre syndrome, a degenerative nerve disease that causes paralysis, sometimes temporary and sometimes progressive. It is getting to the point of no return for her.

“This is the ninth month, a month that is at the edge of the medical literature. It’s a place where the doctors no longer feel qualified to tell us whether Charlotte’s nerves will begin regenerating or she will be stuck like this forever.”

Her husband is a programmer and sits with her night and day while she struggles with her condition. She makes him promise to help her commit suicide if things get too bad. His thoughts of death are focused on the recently assassinated president. To help him deal with his wife and the suffering a nation goes through after an assassination he has created an interactive hologram of the president that he uses to seek answers. 

This hologram has made him a target of every tech companies attentions. The need to protect and capitalize are on everyone’s minds. The need to prolong life is on his. The theme of artificial comfort is everywhere. Be it the joints his wife consumes, the fake conversations he has with the “president” or the security of commercial patents, we all want a little reassurance for the future.

Nirvana is the only music his wife listens to, perhaps to find the courage to kill heself or find a reason not too.

Notable Passage: “Can you tell a story that doesn’t begin?”

Rating: 9-10-9-9 Total= 37

#765 Shadow Families- Mia Alvar

#765 Shadow Families- Mia Alvar

A group of Filipino woman have a social club together while living with their husbands in Bahrain. This is where the jobs are, and they live a good high-society life. The untold reality of being separated from your home and culture is the split that can occur as travel back and forth puts strain on families.

“As children of the Philippines, we hardly knew a family that didn’t have its second, secret “shadow” family. Husbands left the provinces for Manila, wives left the Philippines for the Middle East, and all that parting from loved ones to provide for them got lonely.”

When a young, brash, aloof woman joins their clique things get interesting. She wears the latest expensive clothes without a husband and will only speak broken English eschewing her native Tagalog. Of course, this causes the rest of the group to gossip and resent this new girl. The rift becomes permanent when she appears one day pregnant and announces that the father is one of their husbands. 

That doesn’t fly in an Arab world, so she was removed from sight. The woman are relieved but eventual come to wonder how much hypocrisy they were guilty of back then.

Notable Passage: “We lived like villagers at the foot of a volcano, hoping never to offend the gods who governed our harvest and our wealth.”

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

#764 Hollow- Mia Mingus

#764 Hollow- Mia Mingus

The human race has been separated into two: The Perfects and the Un-Perfects or cripples. The U.P.s are despised for not being perfect and eventually in a holocaust-like event, rounded up and mass-murdered. Before being completely expunged from existence, they were sent to a newly inhabitable planet called Hallow, to exist under military guards in permanent exile.

“There had been talk at one point that the regime would send all the criminals there to be quarantined  and die, but everyone knew the regime needed the free labor in the prisons too much to send their criminals away.”

They eventually overtook there captors and destroyed communication with the Perfects who never learned of the uprising. They kept sending new U.P.s to Hallow where they were taken care of as Arrivals. Now, fifty years later, a letter came with an Arrival announcing the first visit from earth in all this time. The U.P.s know this means death and destruction of the culture they have built free from oppression. They must decide whether to stay and fight or flee to regroup and save their history.

Notable Passage: “How do you teach a history of hate in the name of love?”

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