Stories and novels - quel diference

I once wrote a story - about a period in my life when I worked in a warehouse for a summer job and over the course of the summer got into a labor dispute with the boss and, meanwhile, a friend in Vietnam was shot down and died, all pretty much based on truth, a good story I thought though it was never accepted for publication - I remember in my writers' group a general consensus that I could take the material and build it into a novel - which also may have been true - but that my thought was I'd go to all that work and someone would read the novel and say: you know, it should be just a short story. The real accomplishment would not be writing the novel but writing a story that has the scope (if not the depth) of a novel. That brings me to Maile Meloy's story, Demeter, in current New Yorker: Meloy is, from this and what I remember of others of her that I've read, that rare kind of story-writer who does convey novelistic material within the very tight conditions of a short story. Some others do this - Alice the Great Munro being one of the best - and there's a subtle line of distinction between the "novelish" stories that really work and those that just miss. Demeter just misses in my opinion, though it's an admirable effort. For one thing, there's too much reflection and back story. The actual surface events of the story are very simple and take place in one day: the title character drops her daughter off to spend the next half of the year with father (Demeter's ex), and Demeter goes for a swim in the town pool, interrupted by a sudden storm - and she helps the crew cover the pool and then romps about with the youngsters. During this time, Demeter reflects on her marriage and, thanks to encounter with the daughter of a man she'd had an affair long ago with - he's now dead, and his death is somewhat entwined with the breakup of her marriage - the nub of the novelistic quality of the story - she ponders various aspects of her life and her loves and her mistakes. So, too much of the story is in reflection rather than the action and events of the story itself; second, the epiphanic element - Demeter joining the kids and running across the covered pool surface, literally walking on water, feels a little forced - as does the chance encounter with daughter of ex-lover: in this small town she would surely cross paths with her all the time, not suddenly and unexpectedly. These may be quibbles, but they do make the story feel a little bit engineered for authorial purposes rather than organic to the material and the vision of the piece. Provocative story that the has a lot of nuance and potential - maybe she should turn it into a novel? Just kidding - but I'd read more by her.