The 2020 Short-Story Reading Challenge

Lakey

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A few more stories!

35. “The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson, in The Lottery and Other Stories
This was mentioned in my workshop so I pulled it out for a reread -- this is one of those stories everyone should reread once in a while, I think. It's a great example of a story that draws power from what isn't said as much as what is said. Throughout the entire story, until the very end, we are never told what the Lottery actually is, or what awaits the "winner". It is clever because not only does it create curiosity in the mind of the reader, it also shows how deeply ingrained in the townsfolk the idea of the Lottery is, completely familiar and unchallengeable. The entire meaning of the story is embedded in subtext. I first read this story in sixth or seventh grade, far too long ago for me to remember what my experience of it the first time was, when I didn't know what the Lottery was about. I wish I could get that experience back again! (The story was very controversial when it was first published in the New Yorker. Lots of readers didn't like that the meaning of the story required thought to grasp. Jackson's biographer wrote a little about that here.)

36. "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried," Amy Hempel, in Fictionaut (2010)
A sweet, sad story about the narrator's attempt to cope with her best friend's imminent death.

37. "Faith in a Tree," Grace Paley, in Enormous Changes at the Last Minute
I've been picking my way through this Grace Paley collection for about a year, and decided I ought to polish it off. Faith is Grace Paley's alter ego, a character who appears again and again in her stories; she's featured in most (if not all? I would have to check) of the stories in this collection. In this story, Faith sits in a tree surveying the park where the children are playing and the neighborhood mothers are gossiping. She judges them from this elevated, distant, spot, but Faith herself is never immune from judgment, and she eventually jumps down from the tree and joins the fray.

37/100 read, 24/50 from the last five years. I'm still a little off my pace, but it feels catch-up-able.

:e2coffee:
 

mrsmig

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Finally, finally, finally...I'm back reading short stories after reading a grand total of ONE at the beginning of the year. Everything has been so weird since COVID19 - I'm out of work for the foreseeable future (in RL I'm a stage actress) and so I've focused my time on gardening, cooking and reading some Fairly Heavy Stuff. This week, though, I treated myself to The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019 anthology and I have to say it was a relief to crack it open and enjoy the first few stories.

2. "A Witch's Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies" by Alix E. Harrow

This was charming. The premise is that librarians are either prudish and embittered, or they're witches. The narrator is the latter, and the books themselves are sentient. There's a disadvantaged kid that the narrator is trying to help, in ways that are probably against the rules.

3. "Intervention" by Kelly Robson

Solid SF, about the raising of children in an interstellar society that doesn't have/raise them the old fashioned way. I thought the ending was a bit abrupt and pat, but enjoyed it all the same.

4. "The Donner Party" by Dale Bailey

More horror than SF/F. The highest level of a rigidly structured society (akin to Edwardian England) makes a practice of dining on "ensouled flesh" once a year. The main character and her husband are scrabbling to improve their lot in life. As soon as the couple's beautiful little daughter was introduced, I knew things weren't going to end well, and I confess to getting a little impatient waiting for the predictable end.
 
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mrsmig

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Continuing with The Year's Best SFF 2019 anthology:

5. "How To Identify An Alien Shark" by Beth Goder - I confess this one made me roll my eyes, perhaps because I've seen this sort of thing so often in dailysciencefiction.com (perhaps because the treatment lends itself to DSF's 1500 word count limit). Anyway, it's structured as a scholarly talk and the ironic humor just had a been there/done that feel to it. At least it was short.

6. "The Tale of the Ive-ojan-akhar’s Death" - a beautifully wrought, leisurely paced tale about a non-native functionary who loves the culture in which he works, although that world is rapidly changing around him. I enjoyed reading even though the plethora of odd names made it difficult at times, but the stakes seemed sort of low and it seemed overlong to me. Still, a well-crafted story.
 

Chris P

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Great to see folks making progress on the challenge! I will be getting back in after I finish a non-fic reading project.

In the meantime, the Caine Prize has announced its five shortlisted stories for 2020. The print and ebook anthology (with these and usually about 15 other stories) usually comes out in July.

- - - Updated - - -

Great to see folks making progress on the challenge! I will be getting back in after I finish a non-fic reading project.

In the meantime, the Caine Prize has announced its five shortlisted stories for 2020. The print and ebook anthology (with these and usually about 15 other stories) usually comes out in July.
 

Lakey

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Hello mrsmig and ChrisP — great to see you both.

38. "The Miniature Wife," Manuel Gonzales, in vqr (2013)
I found this story extremely disturbing, even terrifying. The central premise is that an engineer whose day job is miniaturizing things finds one day that he has accidentally shrunk his wife to the size of a teacup. Perhaps because of cultural threads like The Incredible Shrinking Woman (which I adored as a kid) and Honey I Shrunk the Kids, one expects humor in this story — but it is chilling, largely because of the man’s narcissism and the resulting strength of the story’s core metaphors. The woman's powerlessness, her being completely at the mercy of this man who acted as though he was being benevolent when he really wasn't considering her needs at all. The complete lack of emotion in the narrative voice -- he sees the situation narcissistically, as though his wife and her suffering don't really exist except to the extent that they present a puzzle for him to solve. When she does begin to fight back I only found my terror increasing because it seems impossible that she could ever really free herself -- even if she succeeds in killing him entirely, she is still the size of a teacup! So as to them -- It's all just a terribly chilling metaphor for spousal abuse, and for the many ways that under patriarchy a man can stomp out the agency of a woman, trap her, contain her, all under the guise of benevolence. Brrrrrr. The title is a link - go ahead and read it.

38/100 read, 24/50 from the last five years.

:e2coffee:
 

mrsmig

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Lakey, thanks for the link. I read it immediately.

7. "The Miniature Wife" by Manuel Gonzales

Although it's certainly a creepy, well-told tale, I didn't have the same response to this story as Lakey did (although the passage where the narrator deals with the former co-worker - yikes). I loved how the miniaturization took the wife's dissatisfaction in the marriage from simmering resentment (terse little notes) to full-blown fury - initially turned on herself, then on the insects in the house, then to the narrator himself. Throughout, the narrator seems to think he has the upper hand, but she outmaneuvers him at every turn. Even when he tries to trap her, she escapes - and the best part is, he can't figure out how. I don't know if that was hand-waving on the part of the author, or the author pointing up the narrator's myopia as both a spouse and a human being.

The story reminded me of the dark, dark humor of the 1989 film The War of the Roses - funny at times but ultimately, deeply unsettling. I might like to read more of Gonzales' work.
 

Lakey

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mrsmig, unsettling is the right word. There was something too in the emotionless hyper-rationality of the narrator that really gave me the creeps. He seems like one of those men who is so convinced of his superiority that he is utterly blind to the notion that his actions might have harmful consequences for others (especially women, whom they see as merely irrational and hysterical. And yes, the escalation with the coworker - from “I had to fire someone today” to “I fed him to the bird” with no change of tone. Again, brrrrrr.

Meanwhile, three more Grace Paley stories, picking my way toward the end of this collection.

39. "Samuel," Grace Paley, in Enormous Changes at the Last Minute
A very brief story with a terrible punch. Four young boys are horsing around on the subway, to the disapprobation of the other passengers. One of them pulls the emergency cord out of spite, sending one of the boys falling to his death between the cars. There are class and race implications in this little story, as the children are Black and the man who pulled the cord, it is implied but not stated, is not. (The man “walked in a citizenly way” down the end of the car before he pulled the cord, which reminded me of officious white people calling the police on, say, Black children selling water on a streetcorner on a hot day.) Yeah, there is quite a lot going on in this little story.

40. "The Burdened Man," Grace Paley, in Enormous Changes at the Last Minute
This one is a little tragic and ironic in an O Henry kind of way. After a humiliating altercation with the woman who lives next door, the man of the title befriends her. Later he decides that he wants to have an affair with her, so he goes over to her house with the plan of making his intentions known. He is assaulted by the woman’s husband who eventually shoots them both (although they both survive); the husband also shoots himself in the foot, figuratively and literally. I think this is a story that has something to say about a certain kind of tired, hopeless masculinity.

41. "Enormous Changes at the Last Minute," Grace Paley, in Enormous Changes at the Last Minute
I’m not sure I made any sense out of this one. A middle-aged divorced woman has an affair with a much younger cab driver who speaks in hip slang and lives in a commune and is a vegan and writes song lyrics. He criticizes her a lot, and in between being with him she visits her father in a hospital or nursing home, and her father criticizes her a lot too. A little opaque for how tired I was when I read it, I think.

41/100 read, 24/50 from the last five years.

:e2coffee:
 

Chris P

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In the meantime, the Caine Prize has announced its five shortlisted stories for 2020. The print and ebook anthology (with these and usually about 15 other stories) usually comes out in July.

The five stories for this year's prize are a mixed bag, although as usual higher than the average as these things go.

66. "How to Marry an African President," by Erica Sugo Anyadike

Written as an instruction manual on the process of meeting, falling in love with, and being made a pawn of powerful men, the story has a bit more heart than I was at first expecting. But the message is the same: as a woman, you will take the fall for anything the powerful man does.


67. "What To Do when Your Child Brings Home a Mami Wata," by Chikodili Emelumadu

Another instruction manual, this tongue-in-cheek faux-scientific article describes the sociology and options for parents when a young adult takes up with a Mami Wata, which are humanoid sea creatures similar to merfolk, although without the fish tails. Overly long, the story is a spoof of something, probably the cultural norms around the types of women "good Nigerian boys" should be bringing home.


68. "Fisherman's Stew," by Jowhor Ile

Nigerian widow Nimi struggles with loneliness following the death of her husband Benji. Benji visits her in her dreams, and Nimi reserves the nights for him.


69. "Grace Jones," by Irenosen Okojie

Sidra, a Grace Jones look-alike hired out for upscale London parties by her mysterious agent Hassan, carries the burden of a past mistake. Highly literary with multiple allusions to fire, which to me brought images of the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire, this story might merit some line-by-line study.


70. "The Neighbourhood Watch," by Remy Ngamije

I really liked this one. Gritty; honest. The story relates a week in the life of a group of five homeless people in Windhoek, Namibia as they divide up labor, schedule their week, and navigate the system of opportunity and rival gangs across the city. I don't usually quote from stories, but the following paragraph was an insightful eye-opener regarding the perspective of the recipients of charity, and a perspective the givers of charity, such as the referenced Mrs. Bezuidenhout, don't understand:

Silas once asked Elias why he never asked for toothbrushes, or soap, or medicine, or a spacein her garage where they could sleep, if she was being so generous. Elias said it was becauseMrs Bezuidenhout took from them more than she gave. ‘She gives and she gives and we takeand we take. Soon she will not be around to give and give but we will still need to take andtake. She gives something from her home to us and takes some of the street away from us.We need all of the street to survive the street. You understand now?’
 

Chris P

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71. "The Miniature Wife," by Manuel Gonzalez

Lakey and mrsmig, thanks for the discussion on the story. Yeah, it's a creepy one. My take is that he was keeping his wife, who I don't think is ever named, as a pet. Notice that he never even directly reports any of her words, except in the notes? Any voice she has might as well be the cat's or the bird's. He's happiest when building her doll house, and resents it when she starts biting back. It reminds me of people in my past who wanted a baby as a pet, and how they resented the child when that child turned out to be a person.

I can see the "War of the Roses" parallels (I saw that film on a first date--not the best idea I've ever had!) but most of all I was thinking of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Although Dr F intended to create a new life form versus the accident here, the progression of both narrators' fear of their creations and creations' reactions tracks pretty well.
 

Lakey

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ChrisP, I love your observation about the Gonzales story that the man seems to be keeping his wife as a pet. That’s a great way to think about it, and captures a part of the dynamic of that story that creeped me out so badly.

Also, just like last year, when you post about those African stories, they sound so interesting to me! There is too much stuff out there — I already have a ridiculous backlog just of books And lit-mags I have in my possession, and that doesn’t even account for new things coming out every day. I want to read everything!

But, I can only read a few things. Lately I picked up Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft, a textbook by Janet Burroway, Elizabeth Stuckey-French, and Ned Stuckey-French. I’m finding it excellent and delightfully readable. Between chapters are reprinted short stories — entire, not just excerpts. Here’s what I’ve found there so far.

42. "We Didn’t," Stuart Dybek, 2003
Started out as a well-written but distasteful (on account of my own biases, I fully acknowledge) chronicle of a teenager’s frustration at failing to lose his virginity with his summer girlfriend. It gets much better after their nearest attempt, on a beach, is derailed by the bloated body of a drowned woman washing up very near them. After that it stops being so much about the sex and becomes about the way that experience corrodes and ultimately destroys their relationship.

43. "Goal 666," Stacey Richter, 1999
Absolutely hilarious, delightful story about a man’s attempt to be Satanic and Evil and “the baddest of ass” as the lead singer of a death-metal band, but being frustrated at every turn by how nice the guys in the band are, and ultimately by the sunshine in his own spirit. The voice, weird elocution, and conceits of this story are just wonderful. I kind of want to quote a million parts of it, but here is one:

After that night we had a masculine bond, so I was slow to notice details I might have caught earlier. Though Anders had mega-fierce tattoos and Stefan, the small but muscular drummer, had huge, furry sideburns creeping across his cheeks, and Max had the extremely satanic name of Max—there was something not right about these men. There was an air of innocence to them. Despite the fiery badness of The Lords, and their lusty embrace of songs I had written, these guys were scrupulous about washing their hands after using the bathroom. They returned all their phone calls promptly and refrained from resting their forearms on the dinner table. Going for a meal with these guys was like going to a tea party: napkin on lap, chewing with the mouth closed, salad fork, dessert spoon, and so on.

Such a wonderful story!

44. "Binocular Vision," Edith Pearlman, 2011
A rather sweet story about a child given a gift of binoculars, who trains them on the ordinary life of a couple who live next door. Surprising and interesting twist at the end.

44/100 read, 24/50 from the last five years.

:e2coffee:
 

Chris P

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I know what you mean about too much out there to read! Not only am I less than halfway through the Wendell Berry anthology (which only covers about half of his work!) I'm on my twelfth and final book of the Reading Challenge, and I don't know if I want to do another twelve books, shoehorning in some I want to read, or go off on my own and read some others. Then, I'm interested in trying my hand at creative nonfic (maaaaaybe as income for "later in life"), which means training and reading, reading, reading. Oh, and those novels and short stories of mine aren't doing anyone any good sitting on my hard drive.

It's a good problem to have if it's not so frustrating.
 

mrsmig

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More from The Year's Best SFF 2019 anthology:

8. "Carouseling" by Rich Larson - an interesting tale of life after death, with a science fiction twist. Tragedy strikes a pair of lovers when one is killed in a lab explosion - or is she really dead? I found the science part intriguing, and the lovers are a likeable pair, but the stakes seemed kind of low. Still, a nice diversion.

9. "The Starship and the Temple Cat" by Yoo Ha Lee - I liked this one. The language was lovely, and the cat's story rather sweet. You can read it online here.

10. "Grace's Family" by James Patrick Kelly - I confess to being somewhat confused by this one. A sentient starship and its resident crew (who can change form and sex) have long conversations about identity and storytelling. I liked the voice but got lost in the technical aspects.

11. "The Court Magician" by Sarah Pinsker - another tale that smacked more of horror than SFF, but I liked it. A boy eager to learn powerful magic underestimates the personal toll the knowledge will take.
 

mrsmig

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Read a good one today, recommended by an author I follow on Twitter:

12. "Real Animals" by EM North. An alien invasion story with some interesting twists. The alien life forms in this story appear in liquid form and are eventually ingested by animals, which then begin attacking humans. The story centers on three people who have withdrawn to a remote cabin, and how each of them deals with the situation and the loss of loved ones.
 

mrsmig

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Continuing with The Year's Best SFF 2019 anthology:

13. "The Persistence of Blood" by Juliette Wade. This felt like the longest short story ever. It involves a society wherein the ruling class is dying out and its females consequently are being bred to death. It's an interesting premise, but the story is centered on one particular woman of that class, recently widowed, who attempts to step out of her role as a breeder. I hung with it because the writing wasn't bad and I felt that it would eventually go someplace, but it just sort of wallowed around. I'm guessing this may be a short story as an adjunct to a novel/series (P.S. I just looked the author up, and it is), because the world-building within the short story form was overwhelmingly complicated - whereas it mightn't be in a longer work.
 
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mrsmig

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More still from The Year's Best SFF 2019 anthology:

14. "Bubble and Squeak" by David Gerrold and Ctein. I was wrong."The Persistence of Blood" is NOT the longest, draggiest short story ever written; it's this one. James and Hu are a gay couple with darling nicknames who were going to get married that very day but instead must grab everything and escape to higher ground when LA is threatened by a mega tsunami. After a huge load of backstory about how Our Couple met, the authors have them bicycle out because traffic is like whoa, and they tote a buttload of diving equipment because that's James' business. The authors spend the first half of the story getting the protags street by street through LA, which made me want to pull my hair out; then the boys have to make a side trip to rescue a wheelchair-bound friend and drag her through still more streets before they hit utter gridlock and head instead for the subway with friend and wheelchair and dive gear in tow, encountering a group of elderly men who Are Not Going To Make It on the way, who tell the boys to "remember us" but not before James takes a heart-warming moment to comfort one of the men who clearly ain't all there. They get to the subway and bung friend in wheelchair onto the penultimate train and catch the final one (STILL with bikes and gear but that's okay because the subway isn't crowded even though it's THE LAST ONE) and the train almost makes it but the Big Wave still catches them and WHAT LUCK James and Hu have all that dive gear with them because now they can scuba to safety and rescue a couple of people along the way although James has to kill one guy who tries to steal a respirator and tank and when they finally get to safety a teenager who was one of the people they rescued rejects them because they're gay and a day or two later they're recovering from a slight case of the bends and overwhelmed by loss and the fact that authorities won't guarantee to place them in the same refugee camp even though they are a couple and were going to get married THAT VERY DAY and then an army guy finds them and he's got the homophobic teenager in tow and he congratulates them on being heroes and the homophobic teenager apologies for being a dick and then a priest comes along and hears James' confession for killing the guy in the subway and then he pronounces James and Hu married and signs their marriage license which they just happen to have along with them and THE END.

There...now you don't have to read it.


P.S. I can only assume this story made the anthology because David Gerrold is the guy who wrote "The Trouble With Tribbles" for the original Star Trek series way back in 1967, which I guess gives him some kind of extra SF punch. Apparently the story is "about 20%" of a novel he and Ctein (a photographer) are writing together. I think what irritated me most about this story is that it's written as if intended to be a movie, and although it's populated with people of different races (and Gerrold and Ctein are careful to point out these characters by their ethnicity; e.g. "a Korean woman and her daughter"), they also chose what I assume is the white half of the gay couple (because his race isn't mentioned) to be the action hero figure - Hu's mostly just along to tell James how wonderful he is.

P.P.S. If you really want to read it, you can do so for free here.
 
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Lakey

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mrsmig, wow.

:flag:

I’m delighted to say that your summary was every bit as entertaining as this story evidently was not. Thanks for doing the hard work for us! :D

:e2coffee:
 

Chris P

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Yep, I think Bubble and Squeak is a big NO for me. I agree it sounds like a movie; it brought to mind the film San Andreas from a couple years ago, and all the disaster films from days agone.
 

Lakey

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Another writing workshop I had signed up for fell through, so I am on my own this summer as far as manufacturing discipline. Alas! For now, here are three more from Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft, this time, from a chapter that is mostly about dialogue. All of these stories have strong narrative voices, and also do a lot of characterization through dialogue.

45. "Fiesta 1980," Junot Diaz, 1996
This is a technically good and engaging story; I enjoyed it but for whatever reason it doesn’t grab me and shake me. It is a first-person past-tense reminiscence about Am episode in the childhood of a Dominican boy who is recent immigrant to the US. His family goes to a larger family gathering; the boy has trouble with carsickness and throws up on the way to the party. The main tensions in the story are between the boy and his father. His father is angry about the carsickness, which it is implied he sees as a sign of weakness in his son and therefore a threat to his own masculinity. The boy is resentful about an affair the father is having with “a Puerto Rican woman” which his mother almost certainly knows about.

46. “Every Tongue Shall Confess,” ZZ Packer, 2003
I read a ZZ Packer story earlier this year for one of my classes, a story about a Black girl wandering unmoored through her neighborhood and through her life. This story is also very good, though I think it has more humor in it. It’s about a lonely woman, a nurse, who is a born-again evangelical Christian and can’t stop herself from inappropriately proselytizing to her patients. What I really like about the story is how readily it brings you into sympathy with this person whom I am sure I would deplore if I encountered her in real life or read a less intimate account (such as a news story, or someone’s twitter thread about their crazy nurse who preached to them and telephoned them on her day off to tell them that Jesus loved them). I mean, this is fiction doing what it does best, whirling your perspective around so you suddenly feel kinship with people you would normally distrust or dislike.

47. “Emergency,” Denis Johnson, 1992
I did not understand this story. Yeah, that’s really all there is, I don’t get it. The narrator works in an emergency room — some kind of clerical job — but he makes friends with an orderly who steal pills from the dispensary and they get high together. A man comes into the ER with a knife sticking out of his head, and some wacky hijinks ensue. They also go out for a drive and get caught in a snowstorm outside town and some truly repulsive things happen involving a pregnant bunny and the baby bunnies. There is some interesting oblique dialogue, which I’m sure is why it was in this chapter, but as to what the story is about? I have no idea.

47/100 read, 24/50 from the last five years. Still a little off pace, but within striking distance.

:e2coffee:
 
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Lakey

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Hey folks — Today’s short-story-related deal on Amazon today (at least in the USA) is The Story Prize: 15 Years of Great Short Fiction for $2.99 on Kindle. Evidently the Story Prize is awarded each year to an outstanding collection of short fiction, and this book gathers one story from each of fifteen winners. Represented authors include George Saunders, Edwidge Danticat, Tobias Wolff, Elizabeth Strout.

I am going to pass on this one personally, because I already have a huge backlog of stories to read and I can access stories by these writers in the New Yorker archives and that sort of thing. But it’s a pretty good deal if you want to get a taste of what mainstream literary short fiction looks like.

:e2coffee:
 

Chris P

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That is a good deal, although I wonder how many I've already read? I guess at that price even if only one is new it's still worth the price.

I recall the George Saunders's "Tenth of December" was reaaaaaally good.
 

mrsmig

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It was $1.99 when I clicked on the link. So I bought it. :)

Thanks!
 

mrsmig

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Continuing with The Year's Best SFF 2019 anthology:

15. "Sour Milk Girls" by Erin Roberts. This was pretty good: girls in an orphanage have their memories wiped in order to be more attractive to potential adopters. It's available to read free on the Clarkesworld magazine website.

16. "The Unnecessary Parts of the Story" by Adam Troy Castro. Normally I don't care for direct address stories, but this one, a spin on the tired trope probably used most famously in the film Alien, was a decent read. I felt a bit let down at the end - it didn't really ever take off for me - but you can also read it free, on the Analog SF website.

17. "The Temporary Suicides of Goldfish" by Octavia Cade. One of the best stories in the collection so far. A pickpocket steals from the wrong man, and escapes to a peculiar shop where you can be changed into a goldfish to elude your problems. There's a catch, of course; there always is. You can also read this one free, on the Kaleidetrope website.
 

Lakey

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It was $1.99 when I clicked on the link. So I bought it. :).

Glad you did! I must have mistyped — I meant to say $1.99.

Another three from Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft, from a chapter on characterization.

48. “Bullet in the Brain,” Tobias Wolff, 1996
I read this story last year and made a few comments about it in last year’s thread. I’m starting to feel like this is really a writer’s story — which is not to say it isn’t a terrific story, or that non-writers wouldn’t like it, but it has come up over and over in workshops I’ve taken and texts about craft that I’ve read. I think what it does, as a matter of mechanics, is such that writers can’t help but marvel at it.

49. “Tandolfo the Great,” Richard Bausch, 1992
A sad-sack guy better at flirting with alcoholism than with the woman he’s actually interested in, nurses a buzz and a broken heart all the way to his side gig, a magic clown at a kid’s birthday party. The kids are awful, the parents are awful, and Tandolfo can’t quite keep it together; wacky hijinks ensue. Tandolfo is surprisingly sympathetic; you want to smack some sense into him for the way he “hinted” with the girl he liked and then planned to bowl her over with a marriage proposal out of the blue — rather than, you know, maybe asking her out. But he remains on this side of the incel, entitled, women-don’t-appreciate-how-great-I-am line, being merely a sad guy with poor self-esteem rather than an actual undeserving asshole. And in the end he respects the space and autonomy of the woman he wanted to be with. So you really do feel for him.

The story got me thinking about stories where the main character is really distasteful and how amazing it is when authors can make you care about them and sympathize with them anyway, like the ZZ Packer story about the evangelical nurse I wrote about a few days ago, or an Otessa Moshfegh story I wrote about earlier this year, or — at novel length — my favorite repugnant murderer, Tom Ripley. It takes a lot of skill and confidence, I think, to almost dare your readers to walk in the shoes of a deeply unpleasant person.

50. “Eleven,” Sandra Cisneros, 1991
A very short, very sad story about how awkward and uncomfortable it is to be eleven years old. You know when kids say things that seem incredible profound and wise, and you wonder how they can understand the world so well and see it in such a uniquely insightful way? This story is a little like that.

50/100 read, 24/50 from the last five years. Look, I’m halfway there! And less than two weeks after the halfway mark of the year.

:e2coffee:
 

mrsmig

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Lakey, I found "Eleven" online and read it.

18. "Eleven" by Sandra Cisneros. What a moving, poignant little story. The voice is right on the money.

I have a report card from elementary school with a notation from my teacher, written vertically alongside the "Citizenship" portion of the card. It reads "Cries constantly." I was a little younger then than the protagonist of this story, very timid and easily stressed. By the time I reached eleven I'd finally had a teacher who "got" me and was encouraging rather than disparaging, and as a result I was more confident. But I still have days - especially given the current conditions - when I feel three.