#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

#830 Two People- Cookie Mueller

#830 Two People- Cookie Mueller

Stories that are edgy and try to push envelopes don’t age that well. The archetypes that are dark and titillating often become cliché years later. However, if you know that going in, you can appreciate what that kind of story must have felt like when it was written.

Cookie Mueller was an off-beat writer pushing boundaries or at least having fun in the shadows. Her collection Walking Through Clear Water In a Pool Painted Black is a look at her work. By the time it was printed in 1990, many of the references she wrote about were already past their shock value. But they are fun none-the-less. 

The narrator is a teenage bisexual thriving in the drugs, sex, and violence of her youth. In 1964 this would not exactly be mainstream literature, but 50 years later a passage like the following sounds like a teenage writing student trying to copy Jack Kerouac:

“When Jack was in the hospital, we picked up guys together, smoked a lot of cigarettes, sniffed glue, and drank codeine terpenhydrate cough syrup for the buzz.”

Then again if you were reading this in 1964 you probably already knew Kerouac and this already might have felt derisive. Good writers can be both timeless and edgy. It’s a hard line to walk. This doesn’t get there, but it is fun to read.

Notable Passage: “He was sick, quite contagious, and looked ill, but sexy, like pictures of Proust on his deathbed. I was in love, and we were teenagers going steady.”

Rating: 7-5-6-5 Total= 23

#829 To Reinvigorate Our Communication Networks- Lucas Southworth

#829 To Reinvigorate Our Communication Networks- Lucas Southworth

We’ve all wanted to unplug at times. To throw off the weight of twenty-four hour access; to be far away from technology and communication devices. If we did, would it feel good, would we regret it? How long before we want it back…a day, a month, six years?

“If this message does reach you, I wonder if you will answer. And I…have begun to wonder: can such a transmission be enough to justify an action? Can something so simple as desire restore what we’ve already lost? Can it satisfy the longings of our crossed and tattered circuitries?”

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

#828 Fossil Light- Bryn Chancellor

#828 Fossil Light- Bryn Chancellor

Denny and Faith are in a tough spot in their marriage. Denny has just lost his fifth job this year, they live in a dump and the two of them just aren’t getting along. Denny has a confidence problem. He is both baffled by life and stymied by the largeness of the universe. On top of that he is jealous of both his wife and his son. He is needy and can’t stand that there is someone in his family that gets more attention. 

His wife is either unsupportive or unable to find a way to support him adequately. After a drunken incident, Faith takes their son to stay with her mother for a few days while she institutes a no-talking policy at home. She hopes this monastic tradition will help them see what’s important. She doesn’t think it works but it actually may have. They both seem to be good parents and trying hard, but like many, are having a rough go at it. They’ll survive.

Rating: 7-7-7-7 Total= 28 

#827 Bones- Alexis Schaitkin

#827 Bones- Alexis Schaitkin

Kayla and Luz were best friends. They were outcasts at school and a little bit different. They both sought and were embarrassed by attention. Kayla knew that Luz would not be her best friend for long. She thought Luz would get too pretty (like her sister) to stay friends with her when they got older. They would indeed stop being friends, but for entirely different reasons.

The title references the girls’ desire to break a bone, and get a cast. They thought they would like the sympathy. But something always stopped them from going far enough to purposely break something. Perhaps Kayla knew that her own imperfections would never be reason for her feelings of inadequacy. She needed something larger, something obvious like a cast. She didn’t realize until much later that her imperfections were what made her Kayla.

“No matter what she did, all of her best efforts to remake her life would always be a little bit spoiled, because the best things would never feel like home.”

Rating: 7-6-7-6 Total= 26

#826 The Christmas Miracle- Rebecca Curtis

#826 The Christmas Miracle- Rebecca Curtis

Quickly put, this story is about family dysfunction. In more detail it’s about a sugar addicted, schizophrenic woman with Lyme’s disease and her family at Christmas dealing with a pedophile Uncle and the too-often killing of family cats. Sounds fun, doesn’t it?

I’m sure somewhere this is an amusing story but I did not enjoy any part of it. I know all stories aren’t written to please, but there has to be something worth reading, right? I didn’t find anything here topic-wise that was enlightening, amusing, or in anyway enjoyable. It’s not that anything in here is too taboo to talk about, it’s just if you write about something as disdainful as pedophilia, there should be a purpose to it rather than just: this is just a character flaw that we are kind of dealing with. It’s not that it shouldn’t be written, it’s that I don’t want to read it…at least not in the way it was delivered here.

Rating: 7-5-3-4 Total= 19

#825 Proving Up- Karen Russell

#825 Proving Up- Karen Russell

The untamed west has always been a thing of American mythology, full of wonder and rich with stories. In reality it was a harsh existence filled with failure and death. The Zenger family has been on their land for five years. It’s been a tough five years.

“My mother is thirty-one years old, but the land out here paints old age onto her.”

They moved here from Pennsylvania, lost three daughters and barely survived serious draught and famine. But they just about qualify for owning their land under the Homestead Act, all they need to build now is a structure with a glass window. Glass windows however are not something the homesteaders in Hox River, Nebraska have much of. Miles’ father has one window that he will lend to all the homes in the area. Miles is sent out on the day of the inspections to install the window, home by home without the inspector seeing that it’s the same window.

Miles is overtaken by a huge storm and gets lost, loses his horse and is approached by a strange, dark man. The man is covered in sod…he is land himself, coming to take his own claim back.

“There are no bones on his fingers. Hey are made of dust. If it ever rains again, he will seep back into the earth.”

Rating: 8-8-8-8 Total=32