Expecting more from New Yorker fiction

Sometimes you just have to scratch your head in wonder. OK, I have definitely argued in dozens of posts that one of the reasons we read fiction is to gain access to "the consciousness of another," in particular, people from other cultures, eras, and backgrounds. So on the surface, sure, Yiyun Li's story, A Sheltered Woman, in current New Yorker does give us that: it's a story about a middle-aged Chinese-born woman who's lived in the states for maybe about 20 years and makes her living as a specialized nurse-nanny - she stays with the new parents only for the first month of their parenthood, helping the mom learn about nursing, getting everything off to the right start - but purposely never bonding with the child, whom she always refers to as simply Baby - she keeps a meticulous set of notes about each family shes served,about 130 at this point, and as the story begins we see that the new mom she's with is clearly depressed and troubled, bad marriage (to, we learn later, a much older man who no doubt cheats), no feeling of love or nurturing for the poor child. Good premise, but seriously - does this story do anything beyond that premise? I found the writing to be extremely flat, affectless (yes, I understand, that's the limitation of the narrative first-person narration, in part) and the long digressions into the nanny's back story clunk and cumbersome - just great information artlessly patched into the narration. It's a story with so much potential that really goes nowhere: character and situation established but no one learns, changes, or grows over the course of the story. Sorry, maybe I was just being a cranky reader yesterday. But I do hope for more from New Yorker fiction - not just a sketch that, who knows?, may be part of a longer piece that will develop this character and her life further.