#527 Drinking Coffee Elsewhere- ZZ Packer

#527 Drinking Coffee Elsewhere- ZZ Packer

This is a story about alienation. Dina is an outcast at Yale. Being a black woman in this environment made her automatically different, but her isolation—mostly caused by herself—led to a very lonely college experience.

Another girl, an outsider herself, reaches out to her, and Dina reluctantly allows her into her world. “The girl turned to face me, smiling weakly, as though her triumph was not in getting me to open the door but in that fact that she was able to at all when she was accustomed to crying.”

Heidi is gay, and Dina is inexperienced in any sexual or romantic way so she is confused. She is hiding, figuratively behind a strong, gruff personality and hiding literally in her dorm room she rarely leaves. Heidi may seem meek but she is self-aware and honest about who she is. Dina pretends.  She won't let a boy walk her home, because she is afraid he’ll see her poor neighborhood; she is ashamed of being week, so she tells her mother she lost the food stamps; she watches the coming out rally from her window.

Dina denies all opportunities to become less isolated, becoming more and more selfish with each rejection.

Notable Passage: “Constantly saying what one doesn’t mean accustoms the mouth to meaningless phrases.”

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

#298 The Games Boys Play- Sandip Roy

#298 The Games Boys Play- Sandip Roy

Sumit and Avinash were great friends as children. They grew up and both moved to America. They haven’t seen each other in 8 years and are both back in Calcutta, Sumit visiting and Avinash living with his wife and child.

They were more than  friends before they split, they were lovers. Quietly, secretly, passionately together. But Avinash had responsibilities to his family and took a wife arranged for him by his mother. Sumit was confused and crushed, and tried to write him. But Avinash’s wife, intercepted these letters and herself crushed by the revelation, hid them and never spoke a word about what she knew, it would have ruined her family.

So now, all these years later, they meet again, but with others around, there is little space to speak of the past. “Sumit tensed up realizing he had not just inadvertently wandered into well-worn battlefields, but had also tripped over some mines.”

“He looked at Avinash, mystified that that was all they had left between them. But Avinash’s eyes were opaque. He just kept talking as if anything was better than silence.”

Two men living different lives but sharing the same pain, never having the chance to speak about it, and probably never will. Heartbreaking. Three stories in to this “Novel in Stories” I am hooked. The stories themselves work both independently of each other, but also act as snapshots of a larger whole that slowly comes into focus. Fantastic!

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