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

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Saturday, March 14, 2020

A good New Yorker storty by Enright and another one that feels too close to home right now

Good story, Night Swim, by Anne Enright in last week's New Yorker; seems she's the latest to be fully embraced by the NYer, with a story last week and a long review of her new novel, Actress, in current NYer (review seems to be not much more than a lengthy plot summary, but no matter). The story is straightforward and quirky: a 45ish mom is driving he 8-year-old son to a friend's house for a playdate or maybe a sleepover. The son from the first moment seems odd, and for most of the drive to friend's house plays a "game" w/ mother, asking which she'd prefer among a pair of ghastly alternatives (drink a bowl of lava or drown in a pool of lava, e.g.). On arrival at the friend's house, where she'd never been, the mother/driver recognizes the friend's apt building, which has been converted from a mental hospital where the mother was a patient for a period of time in her 20s. Over the course of the story, she reflects on some of the wildness and risky behavior of her youth, which of course ties into the oddly violent fantasies and queries of her son - so that by the end the story becomes an internal interrogation about youthful recklessness and the difficult responsibilities of parenthood. The story ends a bit abruptly, w/ a mother answering her son's final query (would you rather eat a whole turkey or be inside a whole turkey...); the story seems to cry out for more, at the end, but sometimes that's the best way to end things. Further note: Story in current NYer is by a writer I admired from his early work, Matthew Klam (remembering his NYer debut story about a gathering of young politicos on Martha's Vineyard, if memory serves), but whom I haven't seen in print for a while; this story looks really powerful - about a medical crisis involving pregnant wife, premature delivery, vulnerable infant - but it's just too much for me to read at this time (reminds in a way of the great Lorrie Moore story about a child's - her child's? - kidney cancer).

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