#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

#539 The Store- Edward P. Jones

#539 The Store- Edward P. Jones

Al was a normal twenty year old. He had a job after graduating high school (he called it a slave) but that only lasted till now. He was living with his mother and in no hurry to get another “slave” anytime soon. But his brother made him feel guilty about being a drain, and his mother, as only mothers can do encouraged him to apply for a job as a corner store clerk.

“Each Monday morning, like a whipped dog that stayed because he didn’t know any other master but the one that whipped him, I was at the store’s front door, waiting for her to open up.”

He never did quit, and before long he got his own apron, got small raises and eventually got part ownership. He was responsible and a staple in the community, but as things are, that wasn’t enough. His relationship didn’t work out and the store was closing down. Thankfully sometimes hard work pays off, and its time to take the next step.

Jones does a great job at writing literature that sounds like a chronicling of real life. This could be a real oral history of a real corner store in D.C. It doesn’t bowl you over with excitement, or hit you with strong emotion, but it remains as something very real.

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

#521 Charity Begins at Home- Fatima Shaik

#521 Charity Begins at Home- Fatima Shaik

Loutie is a mute, she lives with her parents in Louisiana. They are a old couple, very religious, but not exactly pure of soul. They can physically be best described as very large people.

“Words like wide, broad, heavy or fat are not used in this house. They are much too personal for people in Mama and Papa’s condition.”

Loutie herself is a bit slow, but we see her thought process as she goes about her days. They told her that she was a twin, and her brother never made it. So, she waits for another one, and she thinks about children often.

 “I am a special and innocent child for no matter how old I get, Mama said. She told me that over 30 years past when my mind first wouldn’t work with my mouth. We could never get me to talk. The things I hear stay inside and don’t come back.”

Life in that house is almost dead. It’s stagnant and oppressive as August weather in Louisiana. Her mother has been talking about her own death for as long as Loutie can remember.

“She planned for her funeral over 20 years ago. Since then, she’s just been waiting.”

This is the first story in Shaik’s collection, What Went Missing and What Got Found. So far, so good. This was a unique look into the mind of a non-traditional narrator, so I like that. I hope that Shaik’s Afro-Creole background adds a new viewpoint from other collections we’ve seen here.

Notable Passage: “This is the plan: I will end the suffering of the foreign babies. And when they are all happy, I will be free to be happy, and everyone else will be too. Just like Jesus, I will be free for the sake of all the people and, in the process, I might even get famous.”

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

#512 I’m Pretty Comfortable, But I Could Be a Little More Comfortable- Lydia Davis

#512 I’m Pretty Comfortable, But I Could Be a Little More Comfortable- Lydia Davis

Ok, I’m stretching the definition of “Short Story” for this one, but hey—with a thousand days to play with, why not have some fun? This is a rambling list of everyday situations, occurrences, observations that we, as privileged members of twenty-first century America may think about during the course of the day—minor annoyances that, if rectified, might make the day go just a little bit smoother.

-The shower is too cold

-A man is coughing during the concert

-I’m a little tense

-I bought sour cream by mistake

-This apple has brown spots on it

-The clock is ticking very loudly

and a little self-awareness thrown in

-I cant decide whether to go on reading this book

As you can see by the title, these aren’t major problems but, c’mon you know how annoying they are! I guess the reader will have a variety of reactions to each individual item, but will probably go one of two ways on full reading—it will either make the reader tense and anxious about all the small things to think about, or it will calm the reader down and see exactly how small and petty these trifles actually are. Hopefully, most will see the latter.

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

#333 Taped to the Sky- Luis Alberto Urrea

#333 Taped to the Sky- Luis Alberto Urrea

Hubbard is in a bad way. His wife, the woman he bought a car and an education for, the woman he just helped get through an AA program, left with her sponsor. He decided to take the car back and drive his troubles away.

South to Louisiana, West to Texas, North to Colorado, etc…“This whole chunk of the map was written in poems and liquor bottle labels.”

His grief subsided with each state, each dumb roadside attraction, each violence run-in with the local drunks. As the sky got bigger, his head got clearer:

“There were patterns moving across the sky, high, where small scallops of cloud shimmered like mother-of-pearl. He felt a part of the great becoming, the revelation of the West.”

Sometimes when you feel abandoned, maybe you’ve really been set free. Sometimes, you still need to be taught a lesson.

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

#330 The Neutral Zone- Kate Braverman

#330 The Neutral Zone- Kate Braverman

Zoe and Clarissa are unconventional friends. Once best friends, first loves, and inseparable companions, they have taken different paths in life, but see each other as deep, meaningful soul mates. There is no vocabulary for their connection:

-“They meet episodically. Conventional friendship, with its narrative of consensual commitments and behaviors, has proved too intimate and demanding.”

-“Human perimeters are collective background razor wire. We’re too hip for that shit.”

-“We’ll invent rituals appropriate for our circumstances.”

-“Sporadic moments of illumination in extreme altitudes requiring oxygen masks.”

-“They communicate by email, fax, and newspaper clippings. The telephone is unbearable…it would be too disturbing and intrusive if they could actually perceive one another without artificial mediation.”

Like many passionate relationships during childhood, that fire is never the same. Though the meaning of it may stay strong, paths diverge, and any attempt to go back will lead to resentment and pain.

Notable Passage: “The bay is a liquid representation of fall. It’s in continual transition. It’s a form of treachery. All fluid bodies are autumnal and promise betrayal.”

Rating: 8-7-7-6 Total= 28

#288 Ghost Knife- Sharon Pomerantz

#288 Ghost Knife- Sharon Pomerantz

Annie is having an affair with a married man. They are passionate, loving, but there is not much time. She wonders how she got here. “When, I wonder did my life become someone else’s morality tale? When did I learn to ask for so little."

Dimitri is stuck in his Father’s life. He also loved two woman and kept them both for his whole upbringing. He was hoping to do the same thing, which freaks Annie out:

“Suddenly I am old and bitter and living over someone else’s drafty garage in a  room full of doilies and cracked mirrors and brown shades. Nothing is my own, everything belongs to someone else. This isn’t Edith Wharton, it’s Stephen King.”

Both hope that life will fix their problems, that something will intercede to set them on a better path, but both know that is unlikely. “We are alike, he and I, hoping time of circumstance or other people will decide for us what we cant decide for ourselves.”

Notable Passage: “Home, the word reserved for the place you don’t take your mistress.”

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

#267 Rationing- Mary Yukari Waters

#267 Rationing- Mary Yukari Waters

If you only have a finite amount of energy or time, is it better to lament the bad things around you, or to use that time to try to alleviate the suffering? This story is about the rationing of emotion for more practical pursuits.

Saburo was only 6 when Japan surrendered, and he cannot remember his father from a time before the war, buts sees him as a pragmatic rock of a figure. “What he heard was his father’s voice: a voice like the universe, regulated and unknowable, with the endurance of silent planets rotating in their endless solitary orbits.”

He has a lifelong fear of running out of time, or preparing for a longer life than he will be allotted. This doesn’t seem to spur him into living life more fully, but seems to paralyze him into not making solid decisions. This is a one-life-in-twenty-pages type of story, so all we see are snapshots in the life of Saburo. He is lonely and afraid to disappoint his family.

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

#215 Along the Frontage Road- Michael Chabon

#215 Along the Frontage Road- Michael Chabon

What first appears to be just a nice easy tale about a Father-Son pumpkin picking outing turns out to be something much deeper, layered and complicated like most things father-son related.

There's something quaint and gentle about this story, but there is also something profoundly sorrowful too. The nostalgia that the father feels isn’t just of his childhood, but of regret from the recent past. He is solid and secure for his son, but he is also bitter and regretful.

“I don’t mean to imply that we have somehow rendered the world untrustworthy of our children’s trust and attention. I don’t believe that, though sometimes I do feel that very implication lodged like a chip of black ice in my heart.”

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