#430 Invitation To a Party- Sandip Roy

#430 Invitation To a Party- Sandip Roy

Avinash is a married man, with an adult child in America. He has been living a lie for his entire adult life. He has hidden his sexuality from nearly everyone in his life and had denied himself the pleasure and happiness that only a true partner could offer.

He has never been unfaithful to his wife, but he has recently joined an internet peer group that helps connect homosexual men and gives advice on how to come out to their families. He is not active in the group and when they advertise a party he is hesitant to attend, he has never gone to such a function, But his wife is out of town, and its kind of now or never.

At the party he starts out awkward and lonely, but as he meets a younger man, he looks to be having the type of experience he has been needing. But things take a turn for the worse and he is reminded of the dangers of living with secrets. The oucome is a bit terrifying and lot tragic.

Ten stories in and I’m going to put this collection down for a while. Any worries I had at the start of a “Novel in Stories” not being individual enough to be good as short stories have not come to pass. This has been a joy to read, I look forward to finishing it later in the project (or after).

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

#412 Superstar- Susan Steinberg

#412 Superstar- Susan Steinberg

Now this is something different. This is a story written in statements only. Each sentence is its own line, its own paragraph. At times it can look like poetry, but for the most part, it is not poetic (exception: the notable passage below). We are getting the inner thoughts of a woman riding in the crowded back seat of her friends car after she has stolen a car radio. It was a revenge theft of a guy she hooked up with.

This is thick with male-female power dynamics. She steals the radio because she wants to own this man completely. Then when she gets into a small fender bender with a guy, he treats her like shit calling her names like only a man can call a woman.  Then comes guy #2 who comes to her rescue and is condescending like only a man can be condescending to a woman.

It’s not something I want to explain.

If you have the parts you understand.

As for the rest of you.

Just know I knew it was good to be a woman.

Meaning it was very bad to be a woman.

This is a very good, powerful start for this collection, Spectacle.

Notable Passage: “A sound I can’t describe.

                                    A Sound that was more like a color.

                                    A Color that was more like a pain.

                                    A pain that was more like an answer.”

Rating: 8-9-10-9 Total= 36

#282 Kavita Through Glass- Emily Ishem Raboteau

#282 Kavita Through Glass- Emily Ishem Raboteau

Distance÷Longing= Desire. Hassan saw the world as a mathematician. Things could be described using symbols and signs. His wife saw the world through Architecture using meaning through color and shapes. He was a Muslim, she was Hindu. They had trouble communicating with each other. Until she became pregnant it didn’t seem to matter that much. Now, as another life was coming into the world, their own needs became suddenly important.

We see this story from Hassan’s perspective. We see his resentment, confusion, and ultimate acceptance and enjoyment over her designs in the house. We see his confusion over her sudden emotional change when she gets pregnant. We see his hurt as she pursues a secret desire. We are with him…right up to the point that we see her side. Our mistake is apparent in one quick statement:

“Do you realize you never look at me?”

Not only has Hassan been selfish in his thoughts, so have we, the readers. Of course we are used to following along with the author of a story, but this was brilliant! Bringing us along for the sole reason to show us our own blind spot. We all need to step outside ourselves every so often to see how we are can be so selfish.

In the liner notes for this story, Raboteau says that 30 journals rejected this story before Tin House printed it, and eventually was selected for the Best American Short Story compendium for 2003. I wonder how many of those rejections happened without the reader ever getting to the revealing end?

Notable Passage: “White is a color without depth…or a thing without depth, since it is not a color at all, but a thing that makes depth possible.”

Rating: 8-8-10-9 Total= 35

#214 To Hell With Dying- Alice Walker

#214 To Hell With Dying- Alice Walker

This is the final story in this great collection- In Love & Trouble: Stories of Black Woman. Reading these slowly, space-out over the course of several months, I appreciated the subtle beauty of her prose in a way I wouldn’t have if I consumed them all at once.

“Mr. Sweet was a diabetic and an alcoholic and a guitar player and loved down the road from us on a neglected cotton farm.”

He liked to play with the children from the area and they loved to play with Mr. Sweet. “Toward all us children he was very kind, and had the grace to be shy with us, which is unusual in grown-ups…his ability to be drunk and sober at the same time made him an ideal playmate, for he was as weak as we were and we could usually best him in wrestling.”

Such a sweet and touching love story, a perfect way to end this collection.

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