#859 Runs Girl- Chinelo Okparanta

#859 Runs Girl- Chinelo Okparanta

Ada is a young Nigerian woman whose mother is having serious health problems. Because of money, they don’t go to the hospital soon enough, so her mother suffers. Because of money, they don’t get the care they need that could save her mother’s life. Because of money, Ada will turn to a night of prostitution to try to raise enough money to save her mother’s life. Because of money, Ada’s mother will die soon after hearing of her daughters sacrifice. Because of money, Ada, already ashamed of herself, will think her mother died disappointed in her as well.

Notable Passage: “And so there were silences, as if we no longer valued spoken words, as if spoken words were gaudy finishes on a delicate piece of art, unnecessary distractions from the masterpiece, whose substance was more meaningfully experienced if left unornamented.”

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

#822 Interesting Facts- Adam Johnson

#822 Interesting Facts- Adam Johnson

This is a cathartic look at a woman dealing with her own death and the loss of her to her family. The husband is clearly written as an autobiographical look at Adam Johnson himself. He’s a San Francisco writer that won the Pulitzer Prize for writing a novel taking place in North Korea (The Orphan Master’s Son). I don’t know whether he actually had a wife die of cancer, and since this is a short story, it doesn’t matter if the reader knows. But if he did, and he wrote this story from the perspective of his dying wife…that’s incredibly brave.

The story begins with the wife and husband managing three kids while she goes through cancer treatment. She wonders about her own death and how fast it would take for him to move on with his life. We see her jealousy and sadness. Halfway through the story, you start to wonder if she is alive at all. I don’t remember if there is a point where we are told that she had died, or if it is left vague. I don’t want to go back and see. The way I read it, things slowly coming into focus was a powerful thing.

Notable Passage: “If I want them to stop treating me like a ghost, I should stop acting like one.”

10-10-10-10 Total= 40

#798 The Contestant- Daniel Alarcon

#798 The Contestant- Daniel Alarcon

Reality TV gone wild, sensationalism run amok. Ruth Thalia Sayas Sanchez was the first contestant of a hit Peruvian TV show called Moment of Truth. On it, contestants are hooked up to a lie detector test and asked increasingly personal and revealing questions. Of course the show is looking for dirt to come out. To make more drama, on the stage with Ruth is her parents and her boyfriend. She told the truth, including her stint as an exotic dancer and her two instances of taking money for sex. She won the money but shamed herself and her family.

Months after the show aired, she is knows as the prostitute from the game show. She goes missing, and turns into a national scandal. Reality TV meets tabloid journalism, add the ever present desire for money and fame, and we see the worst of humanity.

Notable Passage: “The truth is always illuminating…It will do no harm, even though it hurts.”

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

#794 Hurricanes Anonymous- Adam Johnson

#794 Hurricanes Anonymous- Adam Johnson

Three weeks after Katrina Rocked New Orleans, Hurricane Rita hit. Many of the people that fled to places like Lake Charles, were now hit twice. Nonc is driving a UPS van and delivering to a few of the rescue and recovery crews. The area is a disaster.

“Outside the campers are bright purple laundry bins, molded plastic porch chairs and the deep black of weber grills, which is what happens when Wal-Mart is your first responder.”

In tow at all times is Geronimo, his son from a two-month relationship with Marnie. Geronimo has unceremoniously been handed off and Marnie is nowhere to be found. Nonc tries to track her down, raise his son, stay in Alcohol recovery, manage a new relationship, survive the post-hurricane chaos and deal with his estranged dying father. There is a lot on his plate. His head seems to be in the right place and with a little luck and a couple of right moves, he might just make it. Luck, however, is not something that has been on his side.

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

#758 The Foundations of the Earth- Randall Kenan

#758 The Foundations of the Earth- Randall Kenan

Maggie was a seventy-year old matriarch of a southern sharecropping family. The joy of her life was her grandson Edward who left some years ago to go to college in Boston. He never came back. She is left lonely and confused.

“Her [spiritual weight] born not of the sun but of profound loneliness, an oppressive emptiness, a stabbing guilt. Sometimes she even wished she was a drinking woman.”

Some years later, Edward dies and she learns that he had been living with another man, afraid to tell her of his homosexuality. God comes to her in a dream and tells her to avoid judgment and hate. She invites her son’s lover—a white man—to come south to visit her and tell her about the real Edward. She is open, albeit confronted with her upbringing, and finds peace in the life she sees. After all, she knows discrimination, and she knows respect.

Notable Passage: “Healing sleep, soothing sleep, sleep to make the world go away, sleep like death. Her mama had told her that sleep was the best medicine God ever made. When things get too rough—go to bed.”

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

#738 Danny In Transit- David Leavitt

#738 Danny In Transit- David Leavitt

This is a study in psychology. A man demanding to have a “proper” marriage with defined male/female roles comes to the realization after having a child that he is homosexual. The wife, already a little in need of mental therapy, loses it. She has a nervous breakdown and literally tears her own hair out. Danny, the only child, normally very self-reliant turns into a high maintenance situation with a hair-trigger reaction to tantrum.

The author does a great job flushing out each persons psychological tendencies in such a traumatic family break-up. It is also a test for the reader in which character you feel more sympathy for. Clearly none of this is the child’s fault so he had automatic sympathy. But what about the mother who is another clear victim, trying her best to be a mother in the face of her breakdown and being honest about not being able to handle life? Or perhaps the father, who is forced by a patriarchal expectation and an uber-machismo career to be something he is not, and then when he finds a road to freedom it causes so much harm to others. Stay in a cage and try to hold together a lie, or be honest and hope to weather the chaos?

Children are the only ones here that have carte blanche excuse for being selfish, but they are also the most resilient. Good story.

Notable Passage: “Just never trust cleanliness. All the bad stuff—the really bad stuff—happens in clean houses, where everything’s tidy and nobody says anything more than good morning.”

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

#710 Aliens- David Leavitt

#710 Aliens- David Leavitt

Imagine an argument between husband and wife. He argues that seat belts are more dangerous than they are safe. She asserts the opposite. They drive off in anger, she in a safety belt and him driving free to jostle about. Predictably their argument gets an immediate test as they get into an awful accident. She wins. Her husband is crippled and is now living in an assisted nursing home trying to recover some of his mental and physical faculties.

Back home, she has to deal with this new reality. Change can be jarring, especially for a child already going through adolescence. Their daughter Nina is now claiming to her family and to her school that she is an alien brought to earth to study humans. She has rejected her reality and crated a new origin story. A very creative way to disown yourself of your family. The oldest son, is also creating his own independence by raising his own college tuition. 

This is a family full of selfishness, ironically it’s a trait that connects all humans.

Notable Passage: “ It’s one thing to look ugly, another to act it.” 

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

#684 Jaws- Julia Elliott

#684 Jaws- Julia Elliott

Families are sometimes like the sun; they are life-giving, warm, and supportive but too much exposure may cause scarring. Caroline is with her parents on an Orlando vacation and she’s doing her best not to get burned by either the sun or her family. Her mother is getting a little delusional, having more and more “senior moments.” Her father is doing all he can to keep her on track but he knows this is her last vacation. 

The first person narration feels at first to be a bit teen-angsty even though Carloline is a post doctorate adult with a husband. That seems like a choice Elliott has made. Caroline is having an undisclosed husband problem, and has run home to the family in a subconscious reaction to her life. Now she remembers her childhood and reverts to some of her childhood habits. She sees the way her father takes care of her mother and wonders if her husband will be that supportive when needed.  

Sometimes the sun will warm you, sometimes it will burn you.

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

#651 The Lawsuit- Naguib Mahfouz

#651 The Lawsuit- Naguib Mahfouz

Money can tear a family apart, it can cause jealousy, hatred, and ruin. If you make your life about getting and keeping wealth, when its gone what else do you have? A man takes a second wife; his family worries that she will take all their inheritance. They fret and complain but the woman stays. The rift and jealousy causes the eldest son to be arrested and die, the mother and father also die. 

As they feared the young wife has taken all their father’s money. The youngest son, the narrator, has been the most level headed about the situation and has always taken care of himself. Now years later someone has robbed the young wife of the money she had stolen. Broke, and destitute she sues the son for more money.

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

#614 Someone Ought to Tell Her There’s Nowhere to Go- Danielle Evans

#614 Someone Ought to Tell Her There’s Nowhere to Go- Danielle Evans

Georgie went to Iraq for a year. His best friend, Lanae, the woman who finally just became his girlfriend didn’t understand why. She had cut him off to prtoect her daughter. Now he’s back, having been discharged from the army with something akin to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He had a bad experience in Iraq involving little girls and it haunts him.

“you didn’t get to pick your ghosts, your ghosts picked you.”

He needs something to give him perspective, something to make his feel safe. He doesn’t get back together with Lanae, but he does start taking care of her daughter, Esther. They get along great and start pretending that he is her Father. This fanstasy starts out harmless but eventually leads to a bit of a scandal. 

Notable Passage: “What’s the difference between you and some other asshole…Either nobody’s responsible for nothing, or every last motherfucker on this planet is going to hell someday.”

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

#608 The Great War- Maxine Clair

#608 The Great War- Maxine Clair

“What good is love when you sit alone and wait?” Good question. She sits at home, with the kids, while her husband is out working, playing messing around. He is a “good husband” because he pays the bills and provides, but he is a bad husband because he always makes he wait.

“Then there was the next baby. A long wait for a fertile body to make little legs and fingers, good eyes, and the best-shaped head. A Long wait.

And every one of those hundreds of days filled itself up with small waits—for the iron to heat up, the skillet to sizzle, the child to get home from school, Sunday to come, payday, a word, a glance, the truth.”

You can feel the anger, resentment, pride, shame in this piece. The seething emotion of a woman, a mother being wronged—strong, righteous, knowing. She will wait, and wait—and when she is don’t waiting, look out!

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

#602 The Sunday Following Mother’s Day- Edward P. Jones

#602 The Sunday Following Mother’s Day- Edward P. Jones

This is a pretty violent story. Madeleine’s father killed her mother by stabbing her to death when she was four. Her older brother Samuel was also there. Violence begets violence and son’s take after their fathers. Twenty years later, Samuel killed his wife in the same way, leaving his children Maddie and Sam behind for Madeleine to take care of.

There are obvious parallels in these characters starting with the names. Sam-Samuel, Madeleine-Maddie, etc. It shows that the people in our families can be reflections of ourselves, extensions of our potential or weaknesses. How connected are we to our families? How large is our need for that connection that we would still feel that connection after such horrible acts?

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

#600 Sisters of the Rain- J. California Cooper

#600 Sisters of the Rain- J. California Cooper

“Some people say with a smile, ‘You write all love stories.’ Well, I say…I try to write about needs…and Love is our greatest need.”

This quote opens the collection Some Soul to Keep, by the wonderful writer, J. California Cooper. I am looking forward to the six stories in this book. Sisters of the Rain is about progress and family. A dying woman, wants her daughter to learn to read and makes sure she gets to school at least for a month a year. On her death bed she writes a note pleading for the teacher to give her daughter a book so she can continue to learn.

That daughter cherishes that book (a book of geography) and names her own children after things from the book, Egypt, Pyramid, Superior and Africa. Like mother like daughter…she dies leaving a wish that her children stay in school. Superior, her eldest daughter takes the wish to heart and takes a job so she can stay in school.

Her struggle is to keep true to her promise, and her family. She fights shame, degradation, jealousy, and desire to pass on to her children the promise she has tried to fulfill.

Notable Passage: “If you ain’t watching life, you won’t know what to do with the life you got in your hands.”

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

#573 A More Serene Girl- Maxine Clair

#573 A More Serene Girl- Maxine Clair

A horrible thing happened to Dorla: she witnessed her Father killing her Mother. She doesn’t talk to anybody at school, but Irene reaches out and tries to walk with her after school, but she is too shy. Irene’s new best friend is Geraldine, they do walk together after school and often go to Geraldine’s apartment.

The apartment is in a “Tourist Home” a rent-by-the-hour type of place. She lives with her mother in a basement kitchenette, and isn’t allowed to wander into the business side of the house. But kids being kids, the two girls go exploring and peep into the keyholes looking for things they don’t know about.

In a shocking turn, Irene sees her mother in one of the rooms with somebody that isn’t her father. She doesn’t tell Geraldine, doesn’t confront her mother, and gets physically ill due to shock. Her life will never be the same. She no longer wants to be friends with Dorla. Seeing the horrible things that adults do to each other first hand, she wants to stay as far away from that as possible.

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

#571 The Seals- Lydia Davis

#571 The Seals- Lydia Davis

This is a touching story. I found a lot more depth in this piece than I have in the others from her collection. It's not only because of the uncharacteristic length, but here gives us something more than idle observations, or clever concepts. This is something real.

A girl/woman(?) is riding a train thinking about the sister that has just died. Siblings can be very close, but when there is a fourteen-year age gap and a different father involved, there will always be a search for definition. What does that relationship mean and what did I mean to that person?

As the train ride goes on, the narrator is having some kind of internal eulogy for those she has lost, not only for her sister but for her parents as well. She is taking stock of her own life by remembering her sister and remembering things of their lives.

“The first New Year after they died felt like another betrayal—we were leaving behind the last year in which they had lived, a year they had known, and starting a year that they would never experience.”

This is my favorite of this collection (can’t and won’t) thus far.

Notable Passage: “Once she was gone, every memory was suddenly precious, even the bad ones, even the times I was irritated with her, or she was irritated with me. Then it seemed a luxury to be irritated.”

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

#570 Grendel’s Mother- Katherine Heiny

#570 Grendel’s Mother- Katherine Heiny

This started out as a pretty straight forward story. Maya and Rhodes are having their first child. As for the title of the story: after their first ultrasound they went to Rhodes’ parents’ house and told them the good news. Rhodes’ wacky mother wanted to name the child Thor if it was a boy, or Grendel if it was a girl. 

Meanwhile, Maya’s stepsister Magellan just broke up with her boyfriend and was devastated.

“Was there any breakup more painful than an unexplained one…It could haunt you for months, even for years, the unknown reason, and take on a nearly mythical importance, until you forgot, or almost forgot, that the truly important thing was that someone you wanted to be with no longer wanted to be with you.”

Like I said, this started out straight forward, then a lot of stuff got dumped on it. Magellan moved in with Maya and Rhodes; they ran into Rhodes first love; witnessed her OB-GYN breaking up with his girlfriend; Maya found out that Rhodes had a brother that died when he was only one day old; She caught Magellan and her ex-boyfriend having sex on her bed, etc.

It isn’t chaotic as much as it’s random. Some of these things make sense for the story but others just don’t add anything that I can see. I guess an argument can be made that all this stuff happens just before a big life moment to test you to see if you are ready, but that’s thin at best. It’s too busy for me—my favorite part is calling the unborn child Grendel.

Rating: 8-7-5-5 Total= 25

#562 St. Jude is Persia- Lucia Perillo

#562 St. Jude is Persia- Lucia Perillo

The narrator is a recovering addict just out of St. Jude’s rehab. She hopes some time at home will do her good.

“A little animal interaction, a few weeks of my mother’s cream cheese and chutney sandwiches, an I figured I’d be back to my old life.”

Home isn’t exactly the calming influence she was hoping for. He father has left, leaving her mother confused, irate and literally murderous: “My mother may be short and squat, a victim of too many shortbreads with her tea, but she’s still not a woman you want to go up against when she’s got a bee in her bonnet and a gun in her hands.”

The mind can create chaos, and it can create peace if you use your imagination. It can also create walls that both protect and isolate. After experiencing rehab, being left by her father, and watching her mother go a little crazy, she was feeling a bit on her own. “And somehow it was thrilling…to be the last remnant of a dying outpost while the enemy encroaches on all sides.”

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

#559 Blessed Night- Naguib Mahfouz

#559 Blessed Night- Naguib Mahfouz

“Yesterday,” said the bartender, “I dreamed that a gift would be presented  to a man of good fortune.”

That is the proclamation that Safwan heard at the bar before departing for home. Only he never found his home. Drunk and confused he stood before an empty lot that was once his house and his family. He was taken in by the police for being drunk and disorderly before being pitied and sent back to his address. This time, there was a house there, but still not his.

There is a crazy series of events that are confusing to both the drunken Safwan and to the reader. It appears that he had made an unwitting deal, a deal of a lifetime, to exchange his family, home, and his life for what was in a suitcase: “In this suitcase is all that a happy man needs in this world.”

I wonder what it is?

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

#551 Snakes- Danielle Evans

#551 Snakes- Danielle Evans

A rift in a family can be absolutely toxic for children. Tara is eight, her mother and grandmother do not get along, but this summer as her parents are on a research trip to Brazil, Tara will stay with her grandmother. Also staying there is her cousin, Allison, who’s parents also don’t get along with grandma.

The summer goes along with the cousins attached at the hip. Grandmother proves to be miserable, and judgmental and even when well-intentioned, does nothing but inflame and belittle Tara. Disaster strikes when Allison pushed Tara into the lake, and she barely makes it out alive. Her parents come back and for the next 15 years, none of them speak to either the grandmother, Allison, or Allison’s parents.

We learn later that before that summer, Allison was having “problems” and sent to grandmothers semi-permanently. The lake incident was just a manifestation of the girls trying to get back to their parents. But the situation and the split pretty much ruined Allison’s life. The isolation from the family drama may have helped Tara, but the details of the grandmother’s psychosis (or whatever you want to call it) are frightening. The story, Tara’s survival, and the revealing truth make for one hell of a story.

“My recovery turned my scars into part favors. If you had seen them—the dot on my leg, the line on my elbow, the water in my eyes when I talked about Allison—then you had something about me to take with you. If you knew what was behind it, you had even more.”

I was feeling towards the middle of this story that is trended a bit too long, like there might have been too much “filler”, but I was proven wrong. The story developed exceptionally well and unfolded perfectly by the end.

Notable Passage: “We are safe, with our families, until we are not.”

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

#538 Referential- Lorrie Moore

#538 Referential- Lorrie Moore

There is a strong bond between a single mother and her only son. The son has mental problems and has been institutionalized for four years. He has been suicidal. His mother has understandably changed her whole life around her son’s condition. Caught in the web of this misfortune is Pete, the mother’s boyfriend.

“At one point he had been poised to live with her, but her child’s deepening troubles had caused him to pull back—he believed he loved her but could not find the large space he needed for himself in her life.”

This isn’t Pete’s son, and as much as he wants to do the right thing, it’s hard for him. He has been struggling with his own life. And now it seems that the son’s situation has gotten worse.

“Once her son had only wanted a distracting pain, but then soon he had wanted to tear a whole in himself and flee through it.”

When Pete and the mother go to visit, it is uncomfortable and awkward. The mother wants to bring his back home. When she gets anonymous calls the truth of her future with Pete becomes obvious. Sometimes even when people are calling for help, you can’t hear them

“How could people be mentally well in such a world?”

Notable Passage: “Mutilation was a language. And vice versa.”

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