#855 Isaac Cameron Hill- Ammi Keller

#855 Isaac Cameron Hill- Ammi Keller

This story is about identity, independence and time. There are many stories with the exact same thematic elements. The world of the transgendered is full of such themes, especially identity. Our narrator, a transgendered woman falls in love with a transgendered man she doesn’t know the sexual preferences of. This reticence causes her to miss a potential opportunity. They become friends but the torch is held for their entire lives and her love remains unrequited.

The rest of the story is a telling of a life spent searching for love amidst the evolving of her own self-identity and evolution. She understands the issue keenly:

“It was lonely, but I accepted this. I couldn’t figure out who was supposed to love me.”

Notable Passage: “When I awoke to the sound of the birds it was with an intensity of sorrow I didn’t know one could feel and not shatter.”

8-7-7-7 Total= 29

#854 The Barn at the End of Our Term- Karen Russell

#854 The Barn at the End of Our Term- Karen Russell

The 19^th and former president Rutherford B. Hayes finds himself reincarnated into the body of a horse unable to speak or make himself known. He is brought into a large barn with twenty-one other horses. Eleven of those are also ex-presidents from all eras. They don’t know if this is heaven or hell, or something else. But being themselves, they fall into old desires and habits.

“In the yard, the other presidents are still hungry for power.”

“Many of the presidents have sworn themselves in to similarly foolish titles: Governor of the Cow Pastures, Commanding General of the Standing Chickens. They reminisce about their political opponents like old lovers. There is a creeping emptiness to winning an office that nobody else is seeking.”

They wonder about their legacy and some try to escape finding something unnatural is keeping them from the ability to leap over the small fence. Hayes has a revelation about creating your own problems stemming from expectation and vanity. He is able to leap the fence and escape, but escape to where?

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

#853 The Love Machine- Julia Elliott

#853 The Love Machine- Julia Elliott

The story is told by a robot inside a college laboratory. It is a project on Artificial Intelligence and we see the process from inside the head of the one being experimented on, or built, or evolving depending on how you look at it. It has been programmed to “feel” love, or something closer to infatuation. First, it “loved” a lab assistant but when that got violent, it was reprogramed to “love” a toy dog.  

As it is being taught more about the world and the human condition, its ability to grasp what love is, and its reaction to it gets more intricate. Like humans, at first the feelings are basic, and their manners mimic those it learns from others. Later it gets more individual, and instead of seeing the programming, it feels more like self-determination. But as it gets more complicated, it boils down one basic idea:

“Nevertheless, I wanted to fuse with her in some meaningful way.”

Love among robots seems pointless, and teaching a robot to learn to love like a human does seems cruelly unfair, since the anatomy isn’t there to ever completely sate those “desires.” But, it begs the question: Isn’t human love itself pointless and unfair even to humans?

Notable Passage: “What are the relationships among love, knowledge, language, and consciousness?”

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

#852 Dedicated- David Leavitt

#852 Dedicated- David Leavitt

Celia has two best friends, Nathan and Andrew. They are really her only two friends. The three of them have known each other since college. They were both, independently friends with her at first, but later things got a bit more complicated.

“Publicly, they are ex-lovers and enemies: privately (but everyone guesses) current lovers and (occasional) friends.”

She is the woman in the middle, always keeping them together or apart. As they bicker and deal with the problems of their own relationship, she wonders why the only men she has ever cared for, will never care for her that way.

“When all the men you love can only love each other…you can’t help but begin to wonder if there’s something wrong with being a woman.”

Friendship is wonderful, anyway you can get it.

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

851 George Orwell Was a Friend of Mine- Adam Johnson

851 George Orwell Was a Friend of Mine- Adam Johnson

This is the powerful story of Hans Backer, the warden of a Stasi Prison in occupied East Germany. The prison was closed in 1990 when the wall came down and his life changed forever, as did the entire culture. It’s been eighteen years since reunification but Hans hasn’t changed a bit. He lived his life and his career with military precision and he thrived in communist East Germany. But the world has changed around him and like it or not he is about to be challenged from the past.

“I do not need to recall the past…I am certain of what it was.”

Although he has lived nearby the whole time, he hasn’t been inside the prison since he finished destroying all the inmate records. He is unaware that the prison is now a museum to the atrocities of the Stasi cruelty and the torture that happened inside its walls. His old office has even been memorialized. 

One day as he walks past, he overhears a tour guide talk about a famous writer interrogated and imprisoned under his charge. He confronts the guide with vehement rebuttals and apologist rhetoric. Not understanding the technology of the day, he doesn’t realize that he has been recorded via a cellphone. He will become a viral video by the next day.

The curator seeing his willingness to talk and shed light on the dark past (even though Hans doesn’t himself see it as a dark past) he invites Hans to give a tour of the prison and freely tell his side of history. The more he talks the worse he comes across and more entrenched he becomes in his own beliefs.

This is a simple man, who chooses to see the world in black and white. He refuses to acknowledge the evils of the past nor his significant role in it. He liked his work and now that his work is seen by the world as tyrannical, he falls back on the crutch of only being a cog in a larger machine. He repeats common refrains like:

“I only ran the prison…I was an administrator.”

This same stubbornness caused him to lose his wife and daughter. They have become ashamed of him as more and more truths about the past come to light. Imagine learning that the wonderful gift your father gave you as a child was stolen from a girl inmate at your father’s torture prison. His wife has taken to alcoholism and that is a sigh of weakness to Hans—not something to be supported or helped. He doesn’t understand how his daughter or his wife cant separate his career with his life:

“But it wasn’t us…I’m talking about family. You’re talking about work.”

This rigidity over what he sees as right and wrong, legal or illegal, even past and present is probably what made him a good prison warden to begin with—at least in communist East Berlin. Some things just can’t be forgiven, but when the perpetrators themselves refuse to admit culpability—phew, that must illicit rage beyond words.

This story is fantastic. Johnson deals with delicate topics by just diving in full force. I’m reminded of two others stories that in vastly different ways tells stories of survivors of prison torture from both sides. The first one is Stephen King's Apt Pupil. This deals with a former Nazi camp torturer living a life as someone else who decades later is confronted with his true identity. He faces his own indulgences from his evil past. That was, in a very King fashioned, over the top and sensational, although dealt with real evil. 

The second is Nathan Englander’s Free Fruit for Young Widows that confronts evil from the other side. How human reaction to confronting absolute evil changes not only the actions of peaceful people but their complete understanding of the world. All three stories stress the importance of history and education of the past. 

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

#850 Old Girl- Mia Alvar

#850 Old Girl- Mia Alvar

Behind every great man is a great woman, they say. This may be true. Behind every average man may also be a great woman too. And what about a thoughtless, self-centered, unrealistic man? Yup, a great woman is likely there as well. The “old girl” of this story is the wife of an aging politician/professor. They grew up together in Manila. She was being educated in the United States and on her way to getting higher degrees when she jumped at the chance to marry him. She would never stop putting him and her family first.

He was a senator back home, one that was jailed by opposition powers. He may have been corrupt himself, but he endured his punishment with her help. He always had big plans, that she would have to clean up when they went awry. As a politician he always worried about appearances, where she again would have to anticipate his needs and clean up after his messes or his mistakes. Always supportive, and never bitter. She has a good family after all. Now, soon after his bypass surgery he want to run the Boston Marathon, so she goes along, knowing somewhere along the line she will need to be there to pick up the failed pieces.

“A marathon is like a marriage: the long haul, the ups and downs, the tests of endurance and faith, the humbling, undiscovered country. Even entering with eyes wide open…guaranteed nothing, only injuries you couldn’t predict, potholes an pitfalls and dark hours no sane person would sign up for willingly.”

Notable Passage: “Life is a test…and those who study well can lick it.”

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

#849 A Voice in the Night- Steven Millhauser

#849 A Voice in the Night- Steven Millhauser

This is an allegorical story about faith. Maybe not so allegorical as it references the book of Samuel from the bible. There are three arcs that are being told in this tale. The first is a re-telling of the boy Samuel who was called in the night by Gog in the house of Eli. The second is about a boy in modern time that was scared by the Samuel story and was kept awake waiting in vain for his name to be called. The third is that same boy, now 68 near death looking back questioning his life and wondering why faith never came.

The boy’s story is interesting. Some biblical stories are outright frightening when heard as a child; booming voices, burning bushes, angry vengeance, it will keep you up at night.

“But the voice in the night is as scary as witches. The voice in the night knows you’re their, even though you’re hidden in the dark. If the voice calls your name, you have to answer. The boy imagines the voice calling his name. It comes from the ceiling. It comes from the walls. It’s like a terrible touch all over his body. He doesn’t want to hear the voice, but if he hears it, he’ll have to answer.”

That’s the point I guess, to scare you into faith. But what if you do take it all literally and wait for the voice to call you in the dark. When it doesn’t come, you think you weren’t chosen. Then what? How long do you wait for the voice? Is faith something you wait for, or is it something you search for? And the most intriguing question to me is, if you had a choice, would you want to hear that voice calling you? There are no half-measures for those who have been chosen.

“If the voice calls your name, your other life is over. There’s no going back.”

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

#848 Runway Blackout- Tara Betts

#848 Runway Blackout- Tara Betts

Fashion models as we know it are a thing of the past. Inter-racial coupling has created many interesting cross-traits, some bad and some good. The most interesting has been the passing and growing trait of shapeshifting. A generation of shapeshifters called: Therianthropes, because of their special abilities have taken over the fashion world. They can be anyone at any time.

“No more worries about weight complaints, skin discolorations, or scars. In fact sometimes, an entire magazine only required one model for all the issue’s glossy pages.”

The common trait among Therianthriopes was their black ancestry. So when they weren’t shifting, most of them donned a black form. Thus, one day the most popular shifter, Voile, a visionary proposed a radical plan. She wanted all models to stop shifting and work the upcoming fashion week in only their black skin. She wanted to show the world the beauty of their true selves. Some balked at the idea, having become exceedingly wealthy pretending to be something they were not, but most agreed.

At first it seemed like a great coming out party, and fashion week was fine, but the aftermath was a disaster. The fashion executives stopped booking the Therianthropes claiming that they were freaks and stealing jobs from legitimate beauties. Funny how the rules change when you refuse to.

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

#847 The Two Stories- Feslisberto Hernandez

#847 The Two Stories- Feslisberto Hernandez

Which one is more tortured, the lover or the writer? A man working in a toy workshop is tortured with a story in his head. He has been inspired by the love of a woman, he cant concentrate and has been admonished at work for his unfocussed demeanor. He sets down to write the story, but finds it is lost, and so it is for his love as well.

“He has set down with the purpose of telling everything exactly as it had happened—and soon realized this was impossible. And that was when his vague and secret anguish began.”

What follows is some notes from his writing during the period of his infatuation. Like waking from a dream, stories can be fleeting images left in mind. They are left blurry, vague, and maddeningly unattainable, just out of your grasp. The anguish of greatness lost.

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

#846 In The Slopes- China Mieville

#846 In The Slopes- China Mieville

The island town of Elam has always been an important site for archeology. The volcano has entombed many important artifacts and ancient wonders. It was always the oddly sized and shaped temples and the weird figures in the artwork that made the place mysterious. But in fact, those oddities were not a mythology but proof of extraterrestrial beings coexisting with humans.

When archeologist finally unearthed an alien body mummified trying to protect human figures from a lava flow, the island became something different, and became McCullough’s new home. 

“Seeing such things in glass cases, reading the captions that described them, McCulloch has been awed enough. Now he saw one delivered. He had to hold his breath.”

Now a “local” he runs a store and welcomes new teams as they come and go. There are currently two rival dig teams trying to uncover new artifacts. There is a dangerous rivalry happening around the digs and new science in the embalming process that is starting to cause trouble in town. Locals are split and history is lost.

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

#845 Crossover- Octavia Butler

#845 Crossover- Octavia Butler

The bad part of town in this factory town has some odd characters, scary, dirty, and pretty much out for themselves. But even through hard living, tough girls need love too. Jane has lived by herself for the last 90 days. Her shifts at the plant go on, with her being twice as productive as anyone else. Her headaches have gone away too. But that all about to change. Some problems you juts can’t shake.

“What am I that I could need you anyway…She wished she had said the words to him but it didn’t matter. It was just another of the things she didn’t have the courage to do. Like accepting the loneliness or dying or…”

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

#844 The Value of a Life- Fatima Shaik

#844 The Value of a Life- Fatima Shaik

Still, years after the attacks of 9/11, those of us who witnessed the horrors and the aftermath up close have a deep connection with the stories that came out of it. The unspeakable sights, sounds and smell will haunt us, and the depth of despair will scare us still. But we also remember the stories of hope and redemption that can only come from such darkness. We hate 9/11 stories but we are drawn to them as well.

I imagine the same is true of survivors of Hurricane Katrina. Like it or not, if you lived through that mess, it is now a part of your being…all of it. This story is about a New Orleans fire fighter, and rescue worker in the immediate wake of the hurricane. His brother fire fighters are his family now, and he needs them. This story paints a brutal but honest picture. It’s delicate but pulls no punches. Only someone from New Orleans can paint this picture.

Notable Passage: “Why didn’t anything go right? Dogs killing people. People killing people. And now Katrina. What was God Thinking?”

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

#843 The Strange and Tragic Ballad of Mabel Pearsall

#843 The Strange and Tragic Ballad of Mabel Pearsall

The title says it all, this tale is both strange and tragic. Mabel teaches seventh grade but has been getting complaints lately. Her behavior has been described as “peculiar.” Her principal notices it, her family notices it and her church notices it. She can’t get out of her own head.

The cause of her distress is the affair she believes is going on between her husband and another woman, a woman who drops off her child every week to have Mabel babysit. She believes this child is her husbands. So she lets the thought fester, and foment and drive herself to tragic ends.

Mabel is clearly going through a nervous breakdown. The normal grind of motherhood has become tedious and without the level of support or personal respect she needs, she lets little things turn big. Whether or not her husband is having an affair is not clear, not to the reader. We have sympathy for Mabel, maybe right up until the end, but that doesn’t mean we don’t see her going a bit crazy.

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

#842 Drifter- Ellen St. John Mandel

#842 Drifter- Ellen St. John Mandel

Such a beautifully sad story. Zoe has lost her husband to cancer and she is lost. She sells belongings, gives up her apartment and leaves town. She is looking for the end of the world, so she goes north to the frozen lands above the arctic circle. She is looking for herself, or trying to lose herself. Maybe those are the same thing.

“Daylight lasted four hours, but the stars here were brighter than any she’d ever seen. She felt that she’s traveled beyond the edge of the world and landed on some colder planet farther from the sun.”

She doesn’t find herself, instead she see’s the ghost of her husband. She flees in fear of what she sees but she can’t return home. She spends the next few years traveling around Europe literally running from the memory of her dead husband. Chance and luck and fate follow her as well. Soon she must and will come face to face with the reality of her husbands death. It will be frightening but welcome.

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

#841 Paycheck- Philip K. Dick

#841 Paycheck- Philip K. Dick

This is one of PKD’s classic stories. It deals with time viewing and technology. Jennings is an electrical mechanic, probably the best out there. He wakes up from a high-security job with Rethrick construction. Due to the nature of the work and the heavy government attention on it, Jennings’ memory has been wiped clean. He has lost the last two years of his life, but the job was done and he is about to be paid handsomely.

Instead of the money he was promised, the clerk tells him he opted to be allowed to take out a bag full of object from the plant. He made this decision before his memory was wiped, so he has no idea why he wouldn’t take the money. He soon realizes however, the seven seemingly benign objects he took out are clues to getting back to the Rethrick plant, he just doesn’t know why yet.

“The decision had actually been his. Amazingly, after two years of work he had preferred a handful of trinkets instead of fifty thousand credits. But more amazingly, The handful of trinkets was turning out to be worth more than the money.”

Besides being a great sci-fi story about time viewing, there is a serious anti-government tilt here. The world has changed into a heavy police state, and where the church used to be the antithesis of government, corporations have taken their place.

“It was the government against the corporation, rather than the state against the church.”

The revolution apparently is fomenting inside of places like Rethrick Construction. Jennings wants in, and since he’s the only one who knows how to run the Time Scoop machine…the future looks good.

Rating: 7-9-9-9 Total= 34

#840 The Wolf-Tove Jansson

#840 The Wolf-Tove Jansson

A woman is acting as a guide for a Japanese artist. He wishes to see ferocious indigenous animals. There are no such animals in the south part of the country so she shows him stuffed animals at an old museum, These are nice  but he wishes to see some live.

She manages a trip to an island sanctuary or a zoo even though it is off-season. They have the place to themselves. It is cold and quiet and the artists enjoys his explorations around the grounds. Finally he gets to see live wolves pacing ominously in their cages.

“The wolves’ ceaseless pacing struck her as appalling. It was timeless. They loped back and forth behind their bars week after week and year after year, and if they hate us, she thought, it must be a gigantic hate!”

There is an undercurrent here with the narrator that I cant quite get a finger on. Her insecurity and isolation mirrors the wolves, but not the ferocity or intrigue. Much of Jansson’s power is the subtleness of her style. I wonder how much of that is lost in the translation. 

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

#839 Ingots- Bohumil Hrabal

#839 Ingots- Bohumil Hrabal

Another cold, dreary story about post war eastern Europe. This one is intertwining two spectrum of the suffering decline of the country. One story is giving you the large view, the macrocosm.

“At one end of the spectrum you’ve got one brilliant Jew, Christ, and at the other end you’ve got another genius, Marx. Two specialists in macrocosms, in big pictures. All the rest of it is Mother Goose territory.”

The large view is also represented by the industrial break down and the literal melting of their glorious past and mans of production. “All our good old golden days are being smelted down, and you don’t even know it’s happening.” The ingots of the title are these pieces of smelted old machinery turned into blocks of steel.

The microcosm is a woman needing help, she has been burned, beaten, diseased and taken advantage of, especially by those who first claim to help. 

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

#838 How I Got My Personal Politics- Anthony Grooms

#838 How I Got My Personal Politics- Anthony Grooms

Izella is obsessed with her hair. She can’t stand the hair she has and all the treatments she has gotten has left it stringy and unmanageable. She wished to get hair like Diana Ross or some other celebrity. Her friend wonders about the her need to be something she is not. 

“I did not say the word ‘white.’ I’m just as proud of being colored as you is. And I’ll come up side your head if you say different. All I said is I wanted good hair. Wanting good hair ain’t wanting to be white. It’s just wanting to be…pretty.”

They go searching for a salon to get a quick perm, but they are too late for today. They get referred to another place where she gets her hair accidentally burned off. Envy is a sin and in trying to look like Marilyn Monroe, Izella ended up looking like Yul Brenner.

#837 The Moment of Conception- Amelia Gray

#837 The Moment of Conception- Amelia Gray

A couple have secluded themselves in a room and are discussing methods of conception. They live in an abode built for such an event: “We had made a life together, a quiet house. In the center of our home was our bedroom, and in the center of our bedroom was an extravagant bed, which we had specially made.” 

The bed was elevated off the floor high above their reach; they had to get up to it using ladders. They sit there now discussing an extreme and painful ceremony of union and sacrifice. Marriage and parenthood are sacrifice of the self…how far are you willing to go?

Notable Passage: “I knew from her kindness and her spinach torte that she was my spiritual equal.”

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

#836 Sneakers- Stephen King

#836 Sneakers- Stephen King

John Tell was a sound technician freelancing around the New York studios. He lived pay check to paycheck, gig-to-gig. He lucked his way into a session with a legendary producer and got to work in an old but famous studio, Music City. There he helped put together his first platinum album…which was shit.

“A platinum-plated dog-turd is still a dog-turd, but a platinum reference is platinum all the way through.”

One day in the third-floor bathroom he spied a pair of filthy sneakers peeking out from under a toilet stall. He paid little attention at first, but as weeks progressed on another gig in that building he would see the same sneakers in the same stall every time he was in there. The only difference was the pile of dead flies kept getting bigger. It was the ghost of an old drug dealer notorious to old timers but rarely seen anymore. The connection to the ghost and his current job helped him find some courage and learn to be himself.

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

#835 Happy Endings- Kevin Canty

#835 Happy Endings- Kevin Canty

McHenry is alone for the first time in his life. His wife has died and his daughter has gone to China after college. His business in rural Montana is in decline so he sells all his equipment and rents out his house. Between that and his wife’s life insurance money, he has enough money to live on. He is not old, but his life seems to have run out of track.

He feels lonely. He remembers hearing his old workers talk about a massage parlor down the road and figures it was worth a trip. It was just what the doctor orders. He thins about dipping his toes back in the dating scene. No hurry.

Rating: 7-7-7-7=28

#834 Practicing- Ellen Miller

#834 Practicing- Ellen Miller

Beth grew up in Canarsie and doted on her father. He was her entire world. He worked the tough, dangerous jobs on a bridge-building crew. Beth always wanted him to take her to work, but he rarely let her go, it was against the law. Then again so was leaving an eight year-old girl home alone. Times were tough but they were a good family, she loved him, but probably had a little too much of a daughter/father Oedipal infatuation.

As she predicted, her father died on the job when she was twelve. She was alone, and will never have that support ever again.

Notable Passage: “The distinction between secrecy and privacy. A tough one.”

Rating: 7-6-6-5 Total= 24

#833 And Love Them? – Thomas Glave

#833 And Love Them? – Thomas Glave

Glave writes this as a white woman having an internal discussion with herself. She has race-guilt and is trying, but failing to work out her feelings on “them.” Hitting all the race hot spots and trying to bring up moments where she felt she was noticeable sympathetic to black people, but then of course equivocating strongly. Saying all too familiar common things like:

“Haven’t we all been hurt by something? But some of us still manage to think.”

“I know I’m a very compassionate person. I can feel sorry for anybody.”

“How I try, as God is my witness how I try.”

Life must be hard for such a compassionate, well-meaning person, who just wants to be kept out of the race issues of the world. Privilege has its…privileges, even if you yourself don’t acknowledge it.

Rating: 7-7-8-8 Total= 30 

#832 Fialta- Rebecca Lee

#832 Fialta- Rebecca Lee

A college architecture student has been accepted to an exclusive artists residency retreat at Fialta run by the renown architect Franklin Stadbakken.  “Fialta…is dedicated not to the fulfillment of desire but to the transformation of desire into art.”

He is a humble student and lucky to be there. He fits it with the other interns and learns his craft while being tasked with milking cows and feeding the pigs. As with most stories about a group of people staying together in close confines for an extended period of time, this is an exercise in psychology, with references to Freud and Ovid.

He gets romantically entangled with the teachers pet, he is asked to leave. There was one rule, and he broke it. It might have been his best achievement. 

Notable Passages: “This is the whole problem with words. There is so little surface area to reveal whom you might be underneath, how expansive and warm, how casual, how easygoing, how cool, and so it all comes out a little pathetic and awkward and choked.”

“And what is a love affair if not a little boat, pushing off from shore, its tilting untethered bob, its sensitivity to one’s quietest gestures.”

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

#831 The Chicken and the Egg- Jon McGregor

#831 The Chicken and the Egg- Jon McGregor

I hate eggs, can’t stand them, the taste, the smell, the stomach curdling feel of them in my mouth. I have never liked eggs. When I was very little, the first stand I took against my parents authority was refusing to eat eggs. There wasn’t enough cheese in Wisconsin to put on an omelet to get me to consume another egg. When I was eighteen and living on my own, I found that many of the tastes I had as a child had changed so I decided to try eggs once more as an adult…I almost vomited all over the 82^nd street diner.

So I have no desire to write an in depth look into this story of a man who has a phobia of opening eggs. He is afraid of finding a bloody chicken fetus inside instead of yolk. The author goes into great detail about such an event. I’m not sure if this is worse for someone who hates eggs, or someone who eats eggs all the time….blech!

Rating: 7-5-7-6 Total= 25

#830 Two People- Cookie Mueller

#830 Two People- Cookie Mueller

Stories that are edgy and try to push envelopes don’t age that well. The archetypes that are dark and titillating often become cliché years later. However, if you know that going in, you can appreciate what that kind of story must have felt like when it was written.

Cookie Mueller was an off-beat writer pushing boundaries or at least having fun in the shadows. Her collection Walking Through Clear Water In a Pool Painted Black is a look at her work. By the time it was printed in 1990, many of the references she wrote about were already past their shock value. But they are fun none-the-less. 

The narrator is a teenage bisexual thriving in the drugs, sex, and violence of her youth. In 1964 this would not exactly be mainstream literature, but 50 years later a passage like the following sounds like a teenage writing student trying to copy Jack Kerouac:

“When Jack was in the hospital, we picked up guys together, smoked a lot of cigarettes, sniffed glue, and drank codeine terpenhydrate cough syrup for the buzz.”

Then again if you were reading this in 1964 you probably already knew Kerouac and this already might have felt derisive. Good writers can be both timeless and edgy. It’s a hard line to walk. This doesn’t get there, but it is fun to read.

Notable Passage: “He was sick, quite contagious, and looked ill, but sexy, like pictures of Proust on his deathbed. I was in love, and we were teenagers going steady.”

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

#829 To Reinvigorate Our Communication Networks- Lucas Southworth

#829 To Reinvigorate Our Communication Networks- Lucas Southworth

We’ve all wanted to unplug at times. To throw off the weight of twenty-four hour access; to be far away from technology and communication devices. If we did, would it feel good, would we regret it? How long before we want it back…a day, a month, six years?

“If this message does reach you, I wonder if you will answer. And I…have begun to wonder: can such a transmission be enough to justify an action? Can something so simple as desire restore what we’ve already lost? Can it satisfy the longings of our crossed and tattered circuitries?”

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

#828 Fossil Light- Bryn Chancellor

#828 Fossil Light- Bryn Chancellor

Denny and Faith are in a tough spot in their marriage. Denny has just lost his fifth job this year, they live in a dump and the two of them just aren’t getting along. Denny has a confidence problem. He is both baffled by life and stymied by the largeness of the universe. On top of that he is jealous of both his wife and his son. He is needy and can’t stand that there is someone in his family that gets more attention. 

His wife is either unsupportive or unable to find a way to support him adequately. After a drunken incident, Faith takes their son to stay with her mother for a few days while she institutes a no-talking policy at home. She hopes this monastic tradition will help them see what’s important. She doesn’t think it works but it actually may have. They both seem to be good parents and trying hard, but like many, are having a rough go at it. They’ll survive.

Rating: 7-7-7-7 Total= 28 

#827 Bones- Alexis Schaitkin

#827 Bones- Alexis Schaitkin

Kayla and Luz were best friends. They were outcasts at school and a little bit different. They both sought and were embarrassed by attention. Kayla knew that Luz would not be her best friend for long. She thought Luz would get too pretty (like her sister) to stay friends with her when they got older. They would indeed stop being friends, but for entirely different reasons.

The title references the girls’ desire to break a bone, and get a cast. They thought they would like the sympathy. But something always stopped them from going far enough to purposely break something. Perhaps Kayla knew that her own imperfections would never be reason for her feelings of inadequacy. She needed something larger, something obvious like a cast. She didn’t realize until much later that her imperfections were what made her Kayla.

“No matter what she did, all of her best efforts to remake her life would always be a little bit spoiled, because the best things would never feel like home.”

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

#826 The Christmas Miracle- Rebecca Curtis

#826 The Christmas Miracle- Rebecca Curtis

Quickly put, this story is about family dysfunction. In more detail it’s about a sugar addicted, schizophrenic woman with Lyme’s disease and her family at Christmas dealing with a pedophile Uncle and the too-often killing of family cats. Sounds fun, doesn’t it?

I’m sure somewhere this is an amusing story but I did not enjoy any part of it. I know all stories aren’t written to please, but there has to be something worth reading, right? I didn’t find anything here topic-wise that was enlightening, amusing, or in anyway enjoyable. It’s not that anything in here is too taboo to talk about, it’s just if you write about something as disdainful as pedophilia, there should be a purpose to it rather than just: this is just a character flaw that we are kind of dealing with. It’s not that it shouldn’t be written, it’s that I don’t want to read it…at least not in the way it was delivered here.

Rating: 7-5-3-4 Total= 19

#825 Proving Up- Karen Russell

#825 Proving Up- Karen Russell

The untamed west has always been a thing of American mythology, full of wonder and rich with stories. In reality it was a harsh existence filled with failure and death. The Zenger family has been on their land for five years. It’s been a tough five years.

“My mother is thirty-one years old, but the land out here paints old age onto her.”

They moved here from Pennsylvania, lost three daughters and barely survived serious draught and famine. But they just about qualify for owning their land under the Homestead Act, all they need to build now is a structure with a glass window. Glass windows however are not something the homesteaders in Hox River, Nebraska have much of. Miles’ father has one window that he will lend to all the homes in the area. Miles is sent out on the day of the inspections to install the window, home by home without the inspector seeing that it’s the same window.

Miles is overtaken by a huge storm and gets lost, loses his horse and is approached by a strange, dark man. The man is covered in sod…he is land himself, coming to take his own claim back.

“There are no bones on his fingers. Hey are made of dust. If it ever rains again, he will seep back into the earth.”

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