#403 Couple of Lovers on Red Background- Rebecca Makkai

#403 Couple of Lovers on Red Background- Rebecca Makkai

She is going through a loss, grief or just a mental crisis, but the narrator is having a delusion, quite a great delusion in fact. She believes that Johan Sebastian Bach has come back to live, came out of her piano and is now living in her apartment.

It’s a charming story, the narrator goes through all the mind experiments you would expect to make the story work. What CD’s would Back listen to? You should probably turn off the TV, that much of a technology and cultural leap would shock him back to death.

Whether this is just a dream she was having after hitting her head, or a mental coping mechanism to get over a tough break-up, the metaphor of her literally living with the music she loves is a strong one.

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

#402 White Christmas- Sandip Roy

#402 White Christmas- Sandip Roy

It was Christmas, and this was Amit’s first year away from Calcutta, from home. He was in Binghamton, NY going to school, and couldn’t afford the trip back. He learned a lot this year, mostly about the differences in culture, His school mentor, Satsih, a PhD student gave him advice. “…he was Amit’s authority on all things American, like health insurance, bars, and race.”

It was race that confused him the most, the importance of it, the stereoptypes used by both Satish and his mother. He found that he had his own attractions to race as well. On this Christmas he went looking for something to eat and found himself in a bar alone for the first time. It would be a night of firsts.

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

#401 The Cruise of the Jolly Roger- Kurt Vonnegut

#401 The Cruise of the Jolly Roger- Kurt Vonnegut

Nathan Durant was a seventeen-year army veteran before he was injured during the Korean War. Once only joining to survive the depression, he eventually became engrained in that world, and being a military man defined him, but what next?

“He had always assumed that he was going to die young and gallantly. But he didn’t die. Death was far, far away, and Durant faced unfamiliar and frightening battalions of peaceful years.”

He bought a boat and looked for a new life. Meeting people not in the military made him confused and feel like an outsider. Re-adjustment was hard. Most people treated the war and stories of war glibly or off-handedly. When asked to tell his own war stories:

“…he found himself including details, large and small, as they occurred to him, until his tale was no tale at all, but a formless, unwieldy description of war as it had really seemed: a senseless, complicated mess that in the telling was first-rate realism but miserable entertainment.”

There is a saying that goes something like: For those who have experienced, no explanation is necessary, for those who have not experienced, no explanation is possible. I suppose war fits into that description pretty solidly.

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

#400 St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolfs- Karen Russell

#400 St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolfs- Karen Russell

The title says it all here doesn’t it? A group of feral girls, birthed by werewolf parents, are in St. Lucy’s, a halfway house turning wild creatures into productive humans.

Symbolism and metaphors abound in this one. It could be children being dropped off at boarding schools when they are young, it could be culture to culture adjusting, it could mean prisoners of war. Depending on what you tale from this, the tone changes. If it’s a harsh reality of a rite-of-passage thing, then that’s one thing. However if it is taken as one culture forcing assimilation of another, then the following lines are tragic:

“We couldn’t make our scent stick here; it made us feel invisible. Eventually we gave up.”

“The pack hated Jeanette. She was the most successful of us, the one furthest removed from her origins.”

Either case, this is a strong allegory, nice work.

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

#399 Assisted Living- Edith Pearlman

#399 Assisted Living- Edith Pearlman

This has some of the same settings and characters from the last Pearlman story we saw, Puck. We are in the Forget-Me-Not antique shop with it’s proprietor, Rennie. This time we learn about some of her regular costumers, in particular an old couple, Muffy and Stu.

“Muffy and Stu Willis slid into the store at least twice a week. Like many long-married people they looked like siblings.”

They have spent their older years purchasing the nice things they see, they have amassed quite a collection. When Muffy falls and injures herself, they begin to auction off their belongings to pay for her treatment. Life is slowly coming to a close.

Pearlman’s style didn’t immediately grab me, although I am warming to it. At times her writing is just a little too delicate for my taste, as it is here. Of course, it is beautiful and hits the mark it aims for…which is a mark a little far off from where I generally like it.

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

#398 Children of the Sun

#398 Children of the Sun

Even tough kids gets sad at the dying of a dog. Jubal, Nathan, Hoodoo, and Lance take Nathan’s dog into the woods to bury him. They are silent and reflective. At times they almost fall into their normal jovial, juvenile behavior, but are struck at the seriousness of the situation.

“As…we stood there trying to pretend we were grownups having a very proper funeral, something…caught us and halted us, drained us of all the horseplay and laughing and made us look at what we were really doing. How could  a group of kids know about the terror and pain of dying…and yet we did know, we did sense something.”

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