#860 New York- Jon McGregor

#860 New York- Jon McGregor

This a director, or a producer, or a writer verbally outlining a short film he wants to make. Two foreign men, some kind of farm hands, stand by the side of the road after work, drinking coffee. It’s an homage to Waiting For Godot. Interesting for what it is, not a great short story, more of a vignette. 

“Of course it’s fucking conceptual, what do I look like to you?”

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

#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

#803 Which Reminded Her, Later- Jon McGregor

#803 Which Reminded Her, Later- Jon McGregor

Six years ago a young woman came to the church and needed help. Michael, as the vicar, often helped people like this. They were given food, maybe a little money and went on their way. This time, Michael invited this woman to come stay in a spare bedroom in his house, the Vicarage. He thought it his duty to do what he could.

“What does faith mean, if we don’t do these things for even the least among us?”

His wife Catherine was taken aback by her presence. It’s not that she didn’t believe in helping people, it’s that she wasn’t asked by her husband if this woman could stay in their house. The woman was quiet and kept to herself, but Catherine saw her as secretive and ungrateful. This was a test of her faith, not in the church but in her marriage.

“These were all good things to care about, to spend every waking moment worrying about. But she was tired of it now. She was tired of being towed along while he did these things.”

She married Michael, not the church, and she felt dragged around by his job and the faith. It was something she was not a part of. Years later, this incident still stuck in her craw.

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

#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

#747 Fleeing Complexity- Jon McGregor

#747 Fleeing Complexity- Jon McGregor

The full title for this story is- Fleeing Complexity: Irby in the Marsh. The entire text of this story reads as:

“The fire spread quicker than the little bastard was expecting.”

That’s it. Far before the terms “flash fiction,” or “micro-narrative” were discussed writers wrote whatever their story required and didn’t worry about what to call the form. Surly this sized “story” can be called something other than a short story, right? I say a story is a story. I included this for this blog to illustrate that true craft is to create a story in the reader’s head by any means in the writer’s tool box. 

There is much implied by this one sentence. Without realizing that your mind immediately fills in certain blanks, for certain you imagined Irby doing something about, near, or because of a giant fire. He was likely frantic or in serious trouble, and if he was near a marsh…etc. If we did this for one sentence, what do we do in a story that’s 100 pages long? The exact same thing, probably. Great thing to ponder for both readers and authors alike.

If I were a writing teacher I would show this and assign my students to write one sentence stories with depth. Maybe I’d have an entire semester where they could only write one perfect sentence a day. That would be fun, and telling I think.

Rating: don’t know how to rate this, so I wont.

#719 If It Keeps on Raining- Jon McGregor

#719 If It Keeps on Raining- Jon McGregor

A Man wakes and looks out his door. He watches the river flow by. His manner is slow, contemplative, un-urgent.

“He stands there each morning and he looks at the river, the fields, the sky. He tries to estimate what the weather will do for the rest of the day. He makes some decisions about the work he is going to do on the treehouse or the raft. He thinks about making breakfast. He thinks about going to look for more wood.”

You get the feeling that he once lived a fast-paced life and reacted badly to it. He has taken refuge in this cabin by the river. Now he prepares for the coming flood. He doesn’t now when it will happen, but he knows it will. He will save himself, and whatever innocence he can along with him.

“But there will be time when it doesn’t pass. When the clouds gather and don’t pass away, and rain pours endlessly upon the earth. And some will be prepared and some will not.”

Beautiful, biblical, poetic.

Notable Passage: “Some people deserve it, what will come.”

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

#677 Keeping Watch Over the Sheep- Jon McGregor

#677 Keeping Watch Over the Sheep- Jon McGregor

A man is being denied entrance to the annual school Christmas nativity production, apparently there is no room at the inn. He has been banned from he school and has a restraining order put against him by his wife. All he wants to do is watch his daughter on stage for the first time. But his violent behavior has caught up with him.

“That’s what he was now, a situation.”

He leaves and tries to watch through the windows from outside, but he is arrested, he doesn’t understand why his daughter is crying. It is a very sad story.

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

#649 In the Winter Sky- Jon McGregor

#649 In the Winter Sky- Jon McGregor 

There is a lot of love in this story, love of family, love of the land. It’s authentic and earthy. It is also tragic like love often is, but this not a love story. This is a story about truth and life, living with your mistakes; it is about inevitability.

George kissed a girl for the first time when he was seventeen, the same night that he killed a drunken stranger with his car. The kiss led to his marriage and the killing led to a secret he would keep for many years. Both were defining moments, both were inevitable and both represent the land and the earth. 

Things happen differently in the farmland. You marry the girl nest door, you work your family’s land when your father gets too old, you live with your mistakes the best you can. Macgregor writes this atmosphere so well; The slowness of a farm, the stillness of time and the deep meaning in small gestures.

“She has seen the faint smiles and nods which indicate that he is well pleased. She hopes that George has noticed; She suspects that he has not.”

The pastoral setting somehow smoothes over the tragedy as a mere fact of life. The whole story is interwoven with the poetry of Joanne. It’s from her notebooks and either unfinished, unpolished or re-written so we see the changes. Like the story itself the poetry is both delicate and deeply rooted, and at times stunningly emotional.

There is no history here.

No dramatic finds of Saxon villages.

No burial mounds of hidden treasures.

Only the rusted anchors our ploughs drag up,

Left when these fields were the sea.

Notable Passage: “The death he had made in the hole he had made in the earth.”

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

#413 That Colour- Jon McGregor

#413 That Colour- Jon McGregor

This Isn’t the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You is a collection that has been on The-Best-Of lists since it was published a few years ago. This first salvo is, as we have seen in several collections, a short mood setter, an "amuse bouche" to announce the intention of the overall work

A woman stares out the window ruminating on the shortness of the years and the changing of the season. She is awed by it, as if it is the first time she has thought these things. Her husband, more pragmatic:

“I asked her why she was so surprised. I told her it was autumn, it was what happened…I told her she went through this every year…I dried my hands and went through the front room and stood beside her. I felt for her hand and held it. I said, But tell me again.”

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