#705 Wherever You Go, There You Are- Danielle Evans

#705 Wherever You Go, There You Are- Danielle Evans

This is an intertwined and somewhat scattered family, but nothing much out of the ordinary. A man is in the hospital dying, his daughter Chrissy is fourteen and needs someone to watch over her while he is attended to. The task falls to her cousin, just past college age.  She has planned an overnight trip to watch het ex-boyfriend’s band play and meet his new fiancé. She takes Chrissy along for the ride.

There is a bit of a coming-of-age thing in this story, but i’m not sure if we’re supposed to follow Chrissy’s story or her cousin’s. Chrissy’s dad dies while theye are out of town, and while she is flown back, her cousin stays and contemplates making bad decisions with her ex. The whole story seems to be a long way to get to the last sentence:

“I should take you to your hotel’—but he doesn’t start the engine and he doesn’t get out of the car, and we just sit there like that, waiting for something better to present itself.”

There is a theme about letting go, or moving on, or self-reliance, but none of it really grabs me much. I have a similar feel about most of Evans’ collection. These are just not focused enough for short stories. Either expand them or tighten them, but for me, they fall too much in the middle.

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

#670 Jellyfish- Danielle Evans

#670 Jellyfish- Danielle Evans

The roof is caving in. For William this is literally what is happening in his life. For his daughter Eva, it was symbolic of the state of her life. This is a Father/Daughter story. A few days after Williams apartment was condemned and lost forever, he was on his way to meet Eva for a celebratory lunch. She was running late having woken up in her ex-boyfriends bed, his new girlfriend out of town.

There is a loneliness throughout this story. We see normal parent-child sentiments like this: “Sometimes he thought her whole life was an elaborate series of barricades against him.”

And more vulnerable realizations that make life seem cold and disconnected: “There were moments when you new things about what was inside of people you didn’t want to, knew how deeply they could disappoint you.”

Each character in the story has their own disappointments, has hurt someone close to them, and doesn’t know how to make themselves happy. There is love here, but not any self-love. 

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

#642 The King of a Vast Empire- Danielle Evans

#642 The King of a Vast Empire- Danielle Evans

This is a story about identity and change. Terrance hears from his younger sister who is changing her major at Harvard so she can work with elephants. Their mother doesn’t like this change, but as far as Liddie is concerned this is a pretty tame shift. 

Since childhood there has been a cloud hanging over their lives. With them in the car, their father crashed into another vehicle killing two children. It was deemed a no-fault accident, but there is always fault if you look for it. Something caused something that lead to X. 

Now each member of the family deals with it in a different way, and change happens quickly and randomly, like a car accident. It could be change like Terrence’s girlfriend leaving him, or Liddie’s aceemic change, but like a caterpillar being thrown out of a window, change will happen, whether it’s forced or waited for.

“…hoping for redemption through change…”

The identity angle of this story is both symblolic and quite literal. Terrence’s identity has been stolen by Carlos Aguilar, the same name as the other family’s only child not killed by their accident. Under Carlos’ use of his identity, his credit is improving, getting more out of his name than himself.

There is a lot to this story, and it’s put together very well. It could have been overwhelming or scattered, but I wasn’t. There was even some humor that worked:

“I had an imaginary conversation with [my girlfriend], in which she told me this was the physical manifestation of my existential crisis, and I told her to stop talking bullshit and then left the room.”

OK, so maybe not ha-ha funny, but funny enough for a chuckle.

Notable Passage: “We were what we had in life.”

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

#579 Harvest- Danielle Evans

A group of girls are at college. You learn a lot about the world at college, especially all the things that make us different or unwanted or seemingly less valued. Angel sees this, the different ways the girls change depending on race, wealth, upbringing. She thinks about boys.

“Of course I had a boyfriend. We all did, they were like accessories; We kept then stored at colleges up and down the East coast and pulled them out on formal occasions or in the event of boredom or loneliness.”

The process of growth and adulthood can be empowering, or it can be sudden and halting. The latter’s what happens to Angel when she becomes pregnant. All these pretty white girls at school are selling their eggs for thousands of dollars, and here she is, unworthy of selling her eggs, but a baby is coming anyway. What is its value, its worth, its chance of a good life; and what about her own life at twenty, un-graduated and now with the biggest responsibility she will ever have? There are no answers, only choices.

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

#523 Virgins- Danielle Evens

#523 Virgins- Danielle Evens

Erica and Jasmine are high school girls from the suburbs in Westchester. This is 1996, the summer Tupac died. Like most teenagers they spend their time talking about their sexual experiences or the ones they’d like top have. They have a “safe” friend Michael that they aren’t involved with but he’s good to have around.

Ready for a real experience, they take their fake IDs and go clubbing in New York. Jasmine is more outgoing and a little more open to the advances of the older men, but they are both in way over their heads. Erica believes that safe doesn’t exist that the wave of peer pressure will knock you down no matter how hard you fight it. She doesn’t see the obvious choice right in front of her, or maybe  she sees it too late.

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