Groff, Huebert, Moore, Smith and Thien
Short Stories in July, August and September
Whether in a dedicated collection or a magazine, these stories capture a variety of reading moods.
Over the summer, I’ve chatted about some of these at length. In particular, Madeleine Thien’s collection, which I was eager to return to, having been so affected by Do Not Say That We Have Nothing.
On exceptionally humid and hot days, sometimes the only reading I could manage was a single story, which gave me plenty of opportunity to dwell on the events therein.
When the weather became more cooperative, I read a story daily in Lisa Moore’s new collection, which has, since, been nominated for the 2018 Giller Prize:
David Huebert’s Peninsula Sinking (2017),
Carianne Leung’s That Time I Loved You (2018),
Lisa Moore’s Something for Everyone, and
Madeleine Thien’s Simple Recipes.
As well as the latest in my Mavis Gallant reading project:
The End of the World and Other Stories (1974).
And some standalone stories, too…
Lauren Groff’s “Under the Wave” (“The New Yorker” July 9 and 16, 2018)
“Sometimes the child felt a second self inside, a watchful and small and crouching thing. It was different from this child who ate and grew and slept, who walked bravely into kindergarten taller than the other children and already knowing how to read.”
What happens on the other side of a traumatic event, which leaves someone inwardly changed forever, when two people who have emerged in the same place agree to adopt and share a new reality which drops a curtain on the loss and devastation behind them.
And does an adult in this situation have a greater responsibility to an external truth or to an internal need?
The look on a woman’s face, which comes back to the girl’s mind “every time someone crumpled a sheets of paper into a ball” leads to unexpected sacrifices.
And readers move between images like the “grey vinyl of a bus seat, scored like aged skin” and a “strange flat brown landscape passing dreamily by the window”, unsure whether to be comforted or outraged.
Jane Ozkowski’s “Every Sin Is Gasoline” Maisonneuve Issue 62 (Winter 2016)
Having quite enjoyed Jane Ozkowski’s first novel, written for young adults, Watching Traffic (2016), I was curious about this story.
“That’s officially what killed her, her head hitting the counter. All of it was probably an accident, only the knife she was butting vegetables with was now in her chest.”
And…that’s the last thing I was expecting to find. But, even though many of my favourite stories offer a glimpse into quiet, often solitary, lives, not all of CanLit’s short stories are sedate. Here, we have Swedish Berries and Lion King figurines – and a knife where it should never be. This brother-sister story begins after the kitchen incident, but events swirl around it in memory; the scenes are vivid and dialogue-driven, and by the time the knife is lodged into Maxine, readers aren’t entirely sure why it matters, but the trip there was certainly engaging.
Zadie Smith’s “Now More Than Ever” (“The New Yorker” July 23, 2018)
“How Eastman still has a job we really don’t know. Not only does he not believe the past is the present, but he has gone further and argued that the present, in the future, will be just as crazy-looking to us, in the present, as the past is, presently, to us, right now! For Eastman, surely, it’s only a matter of time.”
This is a short piece which plays with the question of how we situate ourselves to consider what has come before and what will come after, and the responsibility we have to define and speak our own truths. In this story, individuals who are holding hands on one page are cutting all ties on the next, because someone has taken offense to an opinion. This clearly has nothing to do with the present-day, in which nobody ever gets offended.
DISCUSSION: NOV. 1ST – DEC. 26TH
Following Mavis Gallant’s death on February 18th, 2014, Margaret Atwood contributed this to a remembrance in “The Globe and Mail”:
“”Mavis Gallant was a wonderful writer, a sharp observer of human nature, a formidable conversationalist, and an indomitable spirit who made her own way, often uphill. She was funny, quirky, and prickly if you crossed her, but kind underneath it, especially to underdogs. Her unique voice will be much missed.”
Now that I’ve read 53 of her 123 short stories, I feel as though I am getting to know her a little, reading between the lines of her fiction. Not peering for autobiographical elements (although sometimes I do catch a glimpse) but watching for what she notices, what she troubles to observe and record.
From the Fifteenth District was published in hard cover in 1979, and the “Toronto Star” review claimed it “brings us Mavis Gallant at the height of her powers” and “set the literary world afire”.
The collection contains the following stories: The Four Seasons NOV1 / The Moslem Wife NOV7 / The Remission NOV14 / The Latehomecomer NOV21 / Baum, Gabriel, 1935 — NOV28 / From the Fifteenth District DEC5 / Potter DEC12 / His Mother DEC19 / Irina DEC26
Beginning in 2017, I have been gradually reading through 52 of Mavis Gallant’s published short stories.
One of my favourite story collections from 2017, which was longlisted for the Giller Prize: where do you find short stories to read?
From 2011 to 2015, I read through Alice Munro’s short stories, one after the next. An amazing experience!
I don’t read a lot of short stories but I’m always tempted by literary magazines. Maybe I should do that as a project next year. I think that by reading so many short stories from one author, like you’ve done with Mavis Gallant, that should really help you to be familiar and what strictly makes the stories her stories. If that makes any sense.
It makes complete sense, Iliana, and that’s exactly what draws me to read through an author’s work. Just one collection doesn’t really settle that question for me. In fact, I’ve read five of Mavis Gallant’s collections now, nearly half, and I feel like I’m just beginning to capture some realizations about her voice and storytelling. Why not try a single magazine and choose a single day/lunch hour/commute to sample the short fiction? A slow start to a habit often helps it stick in the end.
Oh how I wish I could have joined you in reading the Alice Munro stories. Care to do it again some day? 😉
After reading The Luminous Sea, I was searching up the author (like you do when the author’s new to you and you have just loved her book), and I found a short story of hers in The Overcast. https://theovercast.ca/paddy-saves-the-day-a-short-story-by-melissa-barbeau/
And I just received K.D. Miller’s new book in the mail – I’m so excited!
What a disturbing little story that is! Did you feel like it was similar to anything you’d read in The Luminous Sea?
K.D. Miller’s All Saints I quite enjoyed and I have a feeling you would enjoy it even more than I did because the theme is probably even closer to home for you (even though it’s set in Ontario). The library doesn’t seem to have K.D. Miller’s new one yet, but I’m sure they’ll get there (and, in the process of looking, I see there are plenty I haven’t read yet too)!
Now what would you do if I said yet, I’ll start reading all of Munro again, right now, today? 🙂
I’d say the story felt similar to the writing in the book, but also different. How’s that for an answer? She seems to like exploring magical or futuristic ideas/events in “normal” settings. I like it.
I remember when “All Saints” was on the Writers’ Trust fiction prize list – I was desperately trying to get my hands on it – I think it was the only one that year I didn’t get to read. None of the libraries in NS had it at the time. A few have it now… maybe they purchased it after all my nagging, but by the time they got it I had given up?
I’d say… Whoa Nelly! 😉
I suppose that’s the only kind of answer that kind of question can have. It came out of wondering HOW any other story could be like that one!
Oh, I know just what you mean. How quickly time moves when one is reading voraciously. It’s not actually that you’re any LESS interested in that book from so-long ago (two weeks, two years, two decades!) but you’re now MORE interested in another. Endlessly interested!
Heheh. I thought so. Well, then, I guess I’ll put Dance of the Happy Shades back on the shelf. 😀
Ha!