#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

#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

#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

#605 The Marriage of the Red Fish- Guadalupe Nettel

#605 The Marriage of the Red Fish- Guadalupe Nettel

Guadalupe Nettal’s collection Natural Histories came to me highly recommended. With influence from Mexico, Paris and Montreal I expect a pretty broad spectrum of input in these stories. The opening piece is The Marriage of the Red Fish. A couple living in Paris is about to have their first child. They live modestly and have a pair of Red fish to keep them company.

The wife, having left her job for maternity leave, has time for contemplation and notices a lot about these fish living in the same bowl. She gets books to learn more an realizes that they are an aggressive species and need more space. As she is more conscious of the fish, they seem to reflect the emotional ups and downs her and her husband are experiencing.

“You tend to learn a lot from the animals you live with, even fish. They are like mirrors that reflect the buried emotions and behaviors we don’t dare see.”

In the aquatic equivalent of her husband sleeping on the couch, she puts one of the fish in a second tank. The human couple also separates briefly causing even more emotional turmoil. In the end neither the fish, nor the couple survive living together. 

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

#604 Rust- T.C. Boyle

#604 Rust- T.C. Boyle

Walt and Eunice are old and living out their retired lives in their old house. They had a dog, but at this moment Walt didn’t know where it had gone to.

“He didn’t know where the dog was, though he knew where his first bourbon and water of the day was—right there on the TV tray in front of him—and it was 11:00 a.m. and plenty late enough for it.”

He went outside to the yard—a place he hadn’t been in years—to find the dog. He falls, and is unable to move. He calls out for his wife, but there is no answer. His hearing isn’t all that good and she’s been drinking as well. She’s probably just sitting in front of the TV.

“…where time was meaningless, a series of half-hour slices carved out of the program guide, day melding into night, breakfast into dinner, the bright electrons dancing eternally across the screen.”

By nighttime, she finally goes looking for him, and by the time, she sees him, she has already tripped over his fallen body and she joins him on the grass—her hip now broken. Depending on how you look at this story, it’s either very funny, or extremely depressing. Old age like this is not exactly something to look forward to.

Notable Passage: “You measure your life in dogs, if you’re lucky you’ll get five or six of them.”

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

#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

#565 The Third and Final Continent- Jhumpa Lahiri

#565 The Third and Final Continent- Jhumpa Lahiri

Once again, Lahiri delivers a stunningly beautiful story. Reading these stories is like sitting by a lake, quietly watching the small ripples on the water. A man, single in his thirties travels back to Calcutta to be married before moving to America. 

“My wife’s name was Mala. The marriage had been arranged by my older brother and his wife. I regarded the proposition with neither objection nor enthusiasm. It was a duty expected of me, as it was expected of every man.”

After only a few days of knowing his new wife, he settles in Massachusetts for six weeks by himself, before his wife joins him. He gets a small room in an large house owned by a very elderly woman, Mrs. Croft; she is alone and bit addled, but finds him to be a perfect gentleman. He moves out when his wife finally comes. They are a bit uncomfortable with the strangeness of each other at first, but seeing themselves through the eyes of Mrs. Croft settles them down.

Soon, while they get comfortable with married life, they see a notice in the paper that, Mrs. Croft has died. He is moved to tears for the loss of this woman he barely knew.

“Mrs. Croft’s was the first death I mourned in America, for hers was the first life I had admired; she had left this world at last, ancient and alone, never to return.”

The beginning of this story happened while American astronauts had first landed on the moon. The world was suddenly new and full of possibility.

Notable Passage: “Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.”

Rating: 10-9-10-9 Total= 38

#520 Honeymoon- Robert Stone

#520 Honeymoon- Robert Stone

Scott is on his honeymoon. His young bride, a former student of his, is awash in the morning glow of a tropical island. Everything seems perfect. She goes off to the pool, and he…calls his ex-wife?!

“The light of day, the first hour after dawn. Pure as creation, he thought. She took his hand. He kept hearing the other woman’s voice, the one whose skin was no longer smooth, though it had been, twenty-five years before. You wanted to go, Be gone.”

He clearly believes he has made a huge mistake. As they go for a reef dive—to take the plunge, so to speak—he makes a big decision.

Rating: 7-8-7-5 Total= 27

#519 Bravery- Charles Baxter

#519 Bravery- Charles Baxter

“Despite what other girls said, all boys were not alike: you had to make your way through their variables blindly, guessing at hidden qualities, the ones you could live with.”

Susan married Elijah, a good-guy, a sweet man, a loving, caring doctor. “He was the only man she ever loved and she was still trying to get used to it.”

After marriage they took a trip to Prague, where they wanted to conceive their first child. Susan kept seeing the sweetness, and tenderness of her husband and knew that he would make a good father, but something bothered her. In the plaza one day a crazy woman grabbed her and told her that she would have a son and she would become jealous of her husband, of the woman inside him.

When her son was born, she did in fact resent Elijah’s tenderness, his ability to sooth the child, and became insistent that he not ever feed the child, that was a mother’s job and he could not take that from her. The fight made him angry and when he came home that night bloody from a fight, he told her a story about saving a girl from being attacked. She didn’t believe the story—he might have made it up to make her think he was more of a man—but it still made her happy…at least for one more day.

Notable Passage: “Prague wasn’t Kafka’s birthplace for nothing.”

#499 Stone Mattress- Margaret Atwood

#499 Stone Mattress- Margaret Atwood

Verna was wronged deeply by her first “love,” Bob. She was sexually assaulted, shamed, and sent away when she showed to be pregnant. When her child was taken from her, she decided not to return to het family but take control of her life and never let anyone control or damage her again.

“It was Bob who’d taught her that only the strong can win, that weakness should be mercilessly exploited. It was Bob who turned her into—why not say the word?—A murderer.”

She turned herself into a black widow, seducing, marrying and eventually killing her husbands—at least four—ad getting the only thing that has ever given her comfort:

“All she ever wanted was to be protected by layer upon layer of kind, soft, insulating money.”

“She had no regrets. She did those men a favor: Surely better a swift exit than a lingering decline.”

Now all these years later, financially secure, and essentially out of the game, she comes across her old attacker, Bob and sets out on a plan for revenge. This is a good story, violent but not graphic. Very satisfying.

Notable Passage: “When it came to love, wasn’t believing the same as the real thing? Such beliefs drain your strength and cloud your vision.”

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

#480 Lamb to the Slaughter- Roald Dahl

#480 Lamb to the Slaughter- Roald Dahl

Mary Moloney was the perfect housewife, loving and doting on her husband. She was also six months pregnant. Her husband was the perfect husband, a hard working police officer. He comes home after work and she makes drinks and they sit together, enjoying each other’s company. This is a happy marriage.

“She loved him for the way he say loosely in a chair, for the way he came in a door, or moved slowly across the room with long strides. She loved the intent, far look in his eyes when they rested on her, the funny shape of his mouth, and especially the way he remained silent about his tiredness, sitting still with himself until the whisky had taken some of it away.”

Of course things aren’t always as they seem. When secrets are revealed, a horrible crime is committed. They say that the cover up is always worse than the crime. In this case it may also be more delicious too.

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

#461 Paper Losses- Lorrie Moore

#461 Paper Losses- Lorrie Moore

Here is another story about a failed, loveless marriage, perhaps even infidelity. At this point of this story-a-day exercise of mine there are some topics that I just don’t like to read about anymore. This is one of them. So, I say right away, I know that it’s not Moore’s fault that I am saturated with this topic. On the other hand, stories that astound the reader often do so by transcending the topic. Yesterday, the Lahiri story I read, Sexy, was about infidelity and a failed marriage, but I found interest in it, because at least it was coming from a different perspective.

Trying to stay somewhat objective, I found the writing here to be a little uneven. Moore is exceedingly clever and creative in her word play and ironic observances. However, it seems here that those moments overshadowed the objective of the piece. If I stop and say—hey, that phrase the author used is a clever one—then I’m taken out of the narration a bit. I didn’t believe I was hearing the narrator speaking, I was seeing the writer, writing clever phrases.

But, some of them were definitely winners, or at least fodder for bumper stickers:

“Rage had it’s medicinal purposes, but she was not wired to sustain it, and when it tumbled away, loneliness engulfed her, grief burning at the center in a cold blue heat.”

“Like a person, a marriage was unrecognizable in death, even buried in an excellent suit.”

“Marriage stopped being comic when it was suddenly halted, at which point it became divorce, which time never disrupted, and so the funniness of which was never-ending.”

“All husbands are space aliens.”

“Hope is never false. Or it is always false. Whatever, it’s just hope.”

“Divorce she could see, would be like marriage: a power grab, as in who would be the dog and who would be the owner of the dog.”

Rating: 7-5-5-7 Total= 24

#460 Sexy- Jhumpa Lahiri

#460 Sexy- Jhumpa Lahiri

Miranda works as a telemarketer for a radio station. She is twenty-two and knows only two people from India, her co-worker and her boyfriend. Her co-worker is recently obsessed with talking about her cousin who’s husband just left him for another woman. Miranda’s boyfriend is also married.

At first Miranda is taken with being someone’s mistress. She is lonely and likes having someone to be with. She feels loved, she feels romantic and she feels sexy. However, hearing the other side of the story from her co-worker makes her feel less special. She see’s first hand what this kind of philandering can lead to and she's losing her taste for it.

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

#440 Debarking- Lorrie Moore

#440 Debarking- Lorrie Moore

Ira was divorced and was having a hard time coping with his new reality. He claimed his wedding ring was stuck on his finger and he couldn’t get it off. He had an eight-year old daughter and a host of good friends.

He started dating a woman, also divorced with a son, that he met at a friend’s party. It was an awkward start, being so unpracticed at dating:

“This elusive mix—the geometric halfway point between stalker and Rip van Winkle—was important to get right in the world of middle-aged dating.”

As the reader, I was rooting for him, feeling bad at the uncomfortable moments, nodding at the I’ve-been-there moments. But after a while, I got the feeling that this woman was either taking advantage of him, unable to have a relationship post-divorce, or she was a little bit crazy. Either way, the whole second half of the story—which ran on for a bit too long—was filled with this tense frustration where you just wished it (the frustration, not the story) would end.

Quality writing.

Notable Passage: “When affection fell on its ass, politeness could step up.”

Rating: 9-7-8-7 Total= 31

#436 The Freeze Dried Groom- Margaret Atwood

#436 The Freeze Dried Groom- Margaret Atwood

We’ve seen a lot of short stories the past 435 days or so that involve a cold, loveless marriage. They generally aren’t my favorite stories. This one however, is better than most. Atwood adds a little noir to the mix.

Sam eats breakfast while Gwyneth tells him that their marriage is over. Without much discussion he packs and leaves. He is after all used to transience, having a career in shady dealings:

“He’s relied on them all his life, those big blue eyes of his. Round, candid eyes. Con-man’s eyes.”

“If anyone could fix him, she could…But she’s failed.”

Sam runs an antique shop, one that has at least two secrets. His partner is an expert at faking antiques, artfully distressing newer cheaper furniture to look older and more valuable. His second secret is drugs. A different silent partner drops drugs in a piece of furniture stowed in a storage unit up for auction. He bids on the unit, and “sells” the furniture to a knowing third party. He’s merely a go-between.

On one of his auctions he finds something very strange in the unit, and finds someone very interesting wanting to buy it from him.

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

#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

#422 Why Coyote Never had Money For Parking- Chuck Palahniuk

#422 Why Coyote Never had Money For Parking- Chuck Palahniuk

Coyote is in a struggling marriage with Hyena, and has a weekly tryst with Flamingo, the local prostitute. He loathes living in this (literal) urban jungle where he thinks nobody contributes to society and they’re all out only for themselves. He wanted to be a rock star, but ended up in this disappointing marriage instead:

“He knew that marriage was like one of those movies where the only exciting parts are all squeezed into the three minute preview.”

Nobody in this story is exactly what they seem, and not only because they’re written as animals.

Reading these anthropomorphic stories where all the characters are animals is like seeing those Gary Larson Far Side comics. Its funny on the surface because, “hey look a cow is talking like a human.” But then you see the satire right below the surface. If done well, you forget the delivery method, and are left with the message. It’s brilliant because too often, people see an archetypal character and assign a stereotype from their own mind into it, and the commentary is tainted or lost.

So in that way, it’s also kind of a Rorschach Test for the reader. When Coyote calls Ox and Llama lazy no good ____ you see them as ____. When really they are just an Ox and a Llama, there is no subtext for them written in. Which is fascinating to me. Sometimes a Jackass is just a Jackass.

Notable Passage: “Everything was free if you’d pay enough.”

Rating: 8-9-9-8 Total= 34

#406 Report from the Trenches- Lucia Perillo

#406 Report from the Trenches- Lucia Perillo

We all have our demons, and our bad decisions. Some of us are lucky to see a sign, or get some help that gets us past them.

Jimmy has cheated on her again, and she flips out. She breaks her good set of dishes and drives Jimmy away with a curtain rod. Jill comes in to help calm her down. "Don’t clean this up", she advises, "sometimes you have to wallow in it to remind you how bad it can get."

She doesn’t need to be reminded, she wants to hear about Jill’s bad decisions which sound so much more romantic and wild than just having a philandering husband. Maybe Jill’s bad decisions are just the sign she needs to get past her own.

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