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A daily record of what I'm thinking about what I'm reading

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Saturday, April 2, 2011

Another chronicler of the odd, and a new voice in short fiction

Ramona Ausubel seems to be an interesting new voice, and what a debut - a short story (Atria - no idea why it's called that) in current New Yorker with a TOC blurb stating her first novel and first story collection are forthcoming. Very nice - the story itself is much richer in happenstance and character development than most recent NY'er fiction - though once again I'm not sure whether to call it a story or not, as it does not seem to reach any resolution, just a point of departure - it may well be an excerpt from the above-mentioned forthcoming, so be it. Her voice is strong and unusual: Atria starts off in what seems to be a fairly typical story of teenage misfit angst, one of the not-popular girls in an all-American h.s., location unknown (maybe California? doesn't really matter), even time unspecified, though probably the near present, struggles with mom and with self-image, and then starts some very odd behavior, even in the realm of short fiction: has sex with a guy she meets behind a 7-11 (unlikely - the teen seems troubled but not insane) and then gets raped by a man who grabs her in a church parking lot - she gets pregnant, hides the pregnancy from mom till she's far along, decides to bear the child - and of course the odd twist is: who's the dad, the rapist or the store clerk, whom she takes to visiting and who visits her in the hospital. Alongside this, girl has increasingly odd and delusional thoughts, and finally does something very weird and cruel to the infant girl - and then the story ends. Yes, I'd want to read more - but not sure if this Ausubel or anyone could effectively maintain this pitch (a few other chroniclers of the odd have tried it, with varying success - think of Geek Love, which was I guess a one-hit wonder).

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