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

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Saturday, January 5, 2013

A title with layers of meaning: The Lost Order

Not a great story, but lots of things I like in Rivka Galchen's "The Lost Order" in current New Yorker - first of all, the title itself, with its layers of meaning. The story is apparently about a woman (first-person narrator) who's lost her job and is at home wrestling with self-image issues (weight gain, much of the first section focuses on her attempt to "not cook spaghetti"). The first event of the story is a call, with the caller listed as "unavailable," in which the caller apparently mistakenly places a Chinese takeout order. Oddly, she listens, converses, doesn't set him straight - this is kind of interesting and sets up a real tension, and we can see the significance of the title right away: the order that doesn't get placed, and the lost order in her life as a result of her lost job, etc. I was surprised about a third of the way into the story to learn that she is married, as her husband calls (from work?) and asks her to look for his lost wedding ring - another intriguing if a bit heavy-handed symbol. Ultimately, she does so; I was surprised again to learn late in the story that she is some kind of attorney - from the outset she seemed so much a type, the typical American story protagonist misfit outsider and loser - that I had trouble adjusting my expectations: as if we moved right out of a George Sunders story and suddenly (gradually?) into an Anne Tyler story. Story doesn't really go much of anywhere, and the twists at the end don't exactly tie it together: I do wish she'd made more of the phone call, driving further with the menacing tone of the story, had her narrator do more than receive the call and leave it in puzzlement. And did anyone else notice that this story shifts midway from first person past - to me, an elegant way to tell a story, as it places the narrator at a safe, retrospective distance from the events - the faux-cinematic and much overused first person present? Why? In any case, there is much to admire here, too - the quirky narrator, the jaunty tone with the background notes of menace, the social angst - and I'll look for more work by Galchen, whom I'd never read before.

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